Friday, February 27, 2015

Amazing Spider-Man #38


“Just a Guy Named Joe”

By Steve Ditko, Stan Lee, and Artie Simek

This is issue was Steve Ditko’s final issue of Amazing Spider-Man.    While writing this, I’m also in the middle of reading Sean Howe’s fantastic, exhaustively-researched book Marvel Comics:  The Untold Story. *

I’m only a few chapters deep, but the biggest takeaway for me was how totally fractured the relationship between Ditko and Lee had become.   By 1965, there was virtually no creative collaboration between Ditko and Lee.  Ditko would plot out and draw his own stories and then give the art to an intermediary at Marvel editorial who would then give the art to Lee to add dialogue.

Historians and fans have speculated that that it was over creative differences like the possibility that Lee and Ditko disagreed on who the Green Goblin should be.  Or it could have been personality conflicts.   At the time, Ditko was identifying himself more and more with Randian Objectivism and as Howe points out:  “Stan Lee… was a magnet for acclaim, eager to please and beholden to [Marvel publishing’s] demands—practically a made-to-order Rand villain.”   
 
I don't see it.
Howe also mentions that Ditko probably felt slighted monetarily as Marvel began signing deals for Spider-Man to be represented in different products and media.  It could have been all of these things, it could have been none of them.  Ditko rarely does interviews, wanting his work to stand on its own.   Because of the breakdown in communication between the two, even Lee was unsure of what exactly happened:  “I’ve had theories advanced by other guys in the office…letterers who said he hated me putting in sound effects.  Sometimes I would add speed lines to his artwork and he hated that.  He thought I was doing too much dialogue or too little dialogue.   Maybe he felt…I don’t really know."

Ditko’s impact on the plots in the last year of stories definitely altered my view of the previous stories that I’ve read for this, especially how nasty Peter Parker had become.  It turns out that there is a lot of common ground between a surly teenager being dragged kicking and screaming into adulthood and a 39-year-old objectivist that’s unhappy at his job.

In fact the closest we get to Peter cracking a smile in this issue is this:


Which brings us to the plot.  The titular character of the issue is Joe Smith, another gruff down-on-his-luck mug in the Merry (goddamn bleak) Marvel Tradition.   By the first page we’ve learned three crucial things about poor Joe: 1.  He’s a failed boxer.  2. He’s a failed professional wrestler (which, incidentally is portrayed as a fake sport in this story.  It's probably safe to assume promoters decided to fix the matches after the Crusher Hogan incident).  3. Everbody hates him.
 
Like I said, bleak.
Even his manager Tommy, the closest thing the guy gets to a friend in the story, refers to him as a born loser.   But there is a momentary reprieve for poor Joe, as Tommy lands him a gig as a monster in a sci-fi television show in the hopes of being the next Lon Chaney.  It doesn’t last.   Joe dons a gaudy robot suit for his first scene and his promptly involved in an onsite accident where he is simultaneously doused in chemicals and shocked by electrical wires.  Naturally, this gives him super-strength, and he lashes out at the other actors on the set in a disorientated rampage.

 Across town, Peter learns that Ned Leeds is back in town but without Betty Brant.  Ned thinks Betty left him for Peter.  Peter thinks Betty left him for Ned.  They scowl at each other, Peter mutters "shuddup" at Ned and wanders into Joe Smith’s rampage.  Peter, as Spider-Man, gets the feeling that Joe isn’t in complete control of his faculties and takes it easy on him.   Joe throws him into a dumpster and escapes with Tommy.  
Meanwhile, Norman Osborn puts on a glasses and a goatee and hires most of the New York City underworld to murder Spider-Man.  In order to ensure that the mobsters won’t take the money and double-cross him, Norman literally cuts a stack of $20,000 in half and gives half to the mob boss with the promise of giving him the second half.  Norman Osborn, it seems, is an idiot.  The mob boss agrees and takes his half of the destroyed, worthless money.  The mob boss is also an idiot. 

Peter is back at school where he runs into Harry, Flash and Gwen and the usual caustic dialogue between the four ensues.  The only thing of note is that Peter and the gang end up wandering through a group of protestors.  Lee’s dialogue plays it off like a Mad Magazine satire of 60’s protestors but the scene is betrayed by Ditko’s portrayal:
 
 

In fact, Lee was put on blast by a member of the Students For A Democratic Society in a nasty letter.   “We never thought anyone in a million years was gonna take our silly protest marchers seriously,”  Lee replied.  He should have gone on to mention to the letter writer that he should have been thankful that it was Lee who wrote the dialogue and not Ditko.

Some of Norman’s hired mobsters catch up with Peter and a fight breaks out that eventually catches up with Joe Smith.  This is probably the best part of the issue where there is a three-way fight between the mobsters (who are also some of Joe’s old sparring partners), Spider-Man and Joe.  The fight scenes are really the only point where Ditko’s art shines in the entire issue.
  
Peter eventually knocks some sense into Joe just in time for Tommy to inform him that a good portion of his rampage on the set of the TV show was recorded and he has the makings of a huge television star.   With the mobsters taken care of and Joe returned to his senses, Peter knocks out a mannequin that reminds him of Ned Leeds and calls it a day.  That night, Peter puts on the news and sees a report about how Joe Smith fought Spider-Man to a draw and is set to become a massive star in Hollywood.   Peter turns off the TV and leads to this final scene:


And on that last bitter note, Peter walks upstairs away from the reader and Steve Ditko bows out of his run as one half of one of the most influential creative teams in the history modern fiction.   And even though a lot his work in these last couple issues strikes such a mean tone, I still had a great time re-reading his work.  

I grew up reading comics in late 80’s/early 90’s and I read a lot of what would eventually become the 90’s house style based on guys like Jim Lee, Rob Liefeld and Todd McFarlane.  I know for a fact that at the time I took guys like Ditko, Romita, and Kirby for granted growing up, so it was neat to revisit him and see what made him and the others so great in the first place.


Ditko left Marvel for Charlton Comics in 1967 where he went on to create a lot of great characters that would eventually be incorporated into modern D.C. Comics when D.C. purchased Charlton.   My two favorite characters from this time were The Question (just a beautifully simple design) and the second incarnation of the Blue Beetle (in my opinion, one of D.C.’s few down-to-earth everyman characters that has had lasting power with readers).   He also went on to create Mr. A, an even more hardcore Randian mouthpiece than The Question could ever hope to be.











And Squirrel Girl, I almost forgot to mention Squirel Girl.  She's great.  Really.  I'm not being funny.  I love Squirrel Girl.  She's not a reflection of Objectivist philosophy.  She commands squirrels.  I love Squirrel Girl.




Ditko would even come back to do a couple odd stories here and there for both Marvel and D.C. and into his 80's he even self-published “secret” comics.   Based on the art featured in the previous link (full disclosure, I’ve not read any of these individual issues of his self-published work, but I’m tempted to order a couple copies when my next paycheck comes in), his most recent work looks beautiful, imaginative, infuriating and confounding.  Not a real big surprise.

*The 15.99 cover price is worth it just read the story about how members The Marvel Bullpen came this close to dosing Stan Lee’s coffee with LSD.  It’s where all the quotes from Stan Lee in this article came from it’s really good.   Buy it.