Why Steve Ditko left Spider-man/Marvel 4 4

[Sweet Lou 14]

3 hours ago, Mercury Man said:

Much like John, Paul and George of the Beatles, it took 3 talents like Stan, Jack and Steve to start something big.  Unfortunately, with great success comes great ego, and the glory days don't usually last.  

Is Artie Simek Ringo?

[Dick Pontoon]

I'm going to change my name but keep my avatar.

[CournalCrunch]

Interesting thread - thanks for sharing

[theCapraAegagrus]

2 minutes ago, Pontoon said:

I'm going to change my name but keep my avatar.

[Mercury Man]

10 hours ago, Sweet Lou 14 said:

Is Artie Simek Ringo?

Pete Best got screwed.  Ringo has been pooping a horseshoe ever since. 

[VintageComics]

20 hours ago, KCOComics said:

Well,  truthfully,  I don't know if he was a pain.  I came to that conclusion based on his letters and from Stan's account.  Stan is marketing guy and story teller. He painted a picture that put himself in the best light. 

The most first hand knowledge I have is, I know a guy that met him when he was working for Charlton.  He was a comic fan and was really excited to meet Steve,  which I'm sure turned Steve off. Ditko didn't really engage in conversation and left the room.

Being an introvert doesn't make him a "pain", but I do think if your going to take the time to write responses to hundreds of fans, you could at least be polite.  

People are complicated

 

It's not hard to imagine a person being different in different settings.

I hear many celebrities are great people and yet when they are pummeled by fans, it can really drag them down and bring out the worst for a bit....and yet they are probably generally, good people.

I see Ditko the same way and I can see his letters to his fans showing a different Ditko than the guy you hung around with every day at the office.

For sure, people are complicated. That's a great way to put it.

[kav]

7 hours ago, VintageComics said:

It's not hard to imagine a person being different in different settings.

I hear many celebrities are great people and yet when they are pummeled by fans, it can really drag them down and bring out the worst for a bit....and yet they are probably generally, good people.

I see Ditko the same way and I can see his letters to his fans showing a different Ditko than the guy you hung around with every day at the office.

For sure, people are complicated. That's a great way to put it.

I'm not any kind of celebrity but became very curt with people when i would draw at coffeeshops.  The constant interruptions so they could start with a question then talk about them got tiresome.  I can see how it would happen.

[kav]

I even started handing out cards with:
"Hello and thank you for showing interest in my work.  However, if I am talking, I am not drawing.  If you have something serious to discuss I charge $50 for that"

[thunsicker]

6 hours ago, kav said:

I even started handing out cards with:
"Hello and thank you for showing interest in my work.  However, if I am talking, I am not drawing.  If you have something serious to discuss I charge $50 for that"

And then you blamed Stan Lee for your falling out. Amirite?!??

[kav]

1 hour ago, thunsicker said:

And then you blamed Stan Lee for your falling out. Amirite?!??

    

   

[shadroch]

Ditko went to the office once or twice a month. Stan made it seem like the artists worked in the bullpen, but Jack and Ditko worked from home, as did John Romita. 

[shadroch]

Marvel Comics was a minor part of Martin Goodman's publishing empire. In 1963, it appears that Stan worked alone, before he was given Flo Stienberg as his Gal Friday. 

They worked out of an office that included mens magazines, mens adventure magazines, romance magazines, crosswords magazines, ect, ect. It was a few years before Marvel got it's own dedicated office with Stan in one room and Flo becoming his gatekeeper.  Even then, Goodman's magazines produced much more income than the comics did. I read that in 1964, one of their monthly crossword puzzles outsold all of Marvels eight comics combined. Magazines sold for double or triple the price of a comic, and were higher on the pecking order.  Magazine Management, the parent company of Marvel took up the second floor of its building, with a few big shots having offices and the other departments worked in a huge open spaced area with self built room dividers separating them. Fabulous Flo was Stan's only help, but she also had to handle MMs switchboard during the regular girls lunch hour. 

The Mighty Marvel Bullpen existed only in the minds of Stan and his loyal followers.

[Prince Namor]

Two more interesting Ditko essays, discussing Comic Book Fans (CBF) and the creation of Spider-man.

[Prince Namor]

[trmoore54]

3 hours ago, Prince Namor said:

Now that was a very Ayn Randian Objectivist rant.  I enjoyed it.  THX for sharing this and the original "essay".  Can't help but liken the passion behind Objectivism to something closely resembling paranoia. Also interesting to read in today's political times/atmosphere...

Edited July 27, 2020 by trmoore54

[Prince Namor]

51 minutes ago, trmoore54 said:

Now that was a very Ayn Randian Objectivist rant.  I enjoyed it.  THX for sharing this and the original "essay".  Can't help but liken the passion behind Objectivism to something closely resembling paranoia. Also interesting to read in today's political times/atmosphere...

I'm not a fan of Rand or Objectivism in much of it's interpretation today, but... I guess I can understand a bit where Ditko's head went...

Here's a young guy brought in by Stan - he's given an opportunity - they build a close working relationship together - sharing ideas and creating stories. Stan gets busier and busier and slowly relies more on Ditko to create the stories. Stan is more of a coach, and an idea shaper and a dialogue specialist, or as Julius Schwartz put it, "an editor. That's what an editor DOES." Obviously Stan was much more than an editor, but in the actual nuts and bolts of a books creation, many times, that was exactly what he was.

Ditko naturally asks for at least a co-plotter credit and Stan stops talking to him. This disillusions Ditko and as he continues to create the stories independent of Stan, some of those objectivist ideas seem to make sense to him. Stan may have been blurring the line as to who did what, but in Ditko's mind that didn't make it any more the truth. A is A as Ditko likes to remind people in many of his essays. 

I'm sure he grew more hardcore with it as he went along, but I'm not sure HOW much, just that he adapted the principles pretty heavily into Mr. A for sure. And if you think about it, that sort of black and white/no grey area character pre-dated society's fascination with judge/jury/executioner 'heroes' like Bronson in Death Wish by a number of years and the Punisher by a decade.

It's all a silly concept of course, in the face of reality, but it did lead to some interesting stories. Those early Mr. A's I really enjoyed. 

[Sweet Lou 14]

I didn't read both of those essays ... the first (shorter) one was enough for me.

So to sum up:  Two strangers come up to speak with him and, out of an abundance of courtesy and respect, acknowledge his reputation for not wanting to speak with fans with a polite apology.  Ditko's reaction is not to think to himself, "How thoughtful that they respect me enough to consider the question of whether or not I would like to be approached," or better yet ask himself "What might I have done to earn such a reputation?"  Instead he dismisses them as small-minded people who accept as "factually true" something they have been told.

Every one of us receives information constantly, a great deal of it second- or third-hand.  All of us need to weigh the probability that each piece of information we receive is at least partly true, depending on the source and any number of other factors, and act accordingly.  The fans who approached Ditko were not "programmed ... parrots" -- they were simply people who weighed the information they'd received and made a simple calculation as to what approach would most likely yield a favorable outcome in their interaction with this (very minor) celebrity.  If their assumption were "factually true" (side note -- it would seem that it absolutely was, as Ditko comes across like a defensive jerk with minimal self-awareness) then their acknowledgment maximizes their chances of a friendly response from someone who would ordinarily be unwelcoming.  And if their assumption were false, it gives the more welcoming celebrity an opportunity to cheerfully correct them, proving the falseness of said assumption and turning two strangers into evangelists for his reputation.

The calculation those fans made was 100% on target, even for someone who wants to apply game theory and subject it to absurdist analytic scrutiny (as I have somewhat lazily done above).

Or we could just say that they were thoughtful, polite people with a basic mastery of social norms and adequate interpersonal skills, something Ditko clearly lacked.

Edited July 27, 2020 by Sweet Lou 14

[Prince Namor]

9 minutes ago, Sweet Lou 14 said:

I didn't read both of those essays ... the first (shorter) one was enough for me.

So to sum up:  Two strangers come up to speak with him and, out of an abundance of courtesy and respect, acknowledge his reputation for not wanting to speak with fans with a polite apology.  Ditko's reaction is not to think to himself, "How thoughtful that they respect me enough to consider the question of whether or not I would like to be approached," or better yet ask himself "What might I have done to earn such a reputation?"  Instead he dismisses them as small-minded people who accept as "factually true" something they have been told.

Every one of us receives information constantly, a great deal of it second- or third-hand.  All of us need to weigh the probability that each piece of information we receive is at least partly true, depending on the source and any number of other factors, and act accordingly.  The fans who approached Ditko were not "programmed ... parrots" -- they were simply people who weighed the information they'd received and made a simple calculation as to what approach would most likely yield a favorable outcome in their interaction with this (very minor) celebrity.  If their assumption were "factually true" (side note -- it would seem that it absolutely was, as Ditko comes across like a defensive jerk with minimal self-awareness) then their acknowledgment maximizes their chances of a friendly response from someone who would ordinarily be unwelcoming.  And if their assumption were false, it gives the more welcoming celebrity an opportunity to cheerfully correct them, proving the falseness of said assumption and turning two strangers into evangelists for his reputation.

The calculation those fans made was 100% on target, even for someone who wants to apply game theory and subject it to absurdist analytic scrutiny (as I have somewhat lazily done above).

Or we could just say that they were thoughtful, polite people with a basic mastery of social norms and adequate interpersonal skills, something Ditko clearly lacked.

You're assuming the fan boys were polite and well spoken, and assuming that Ditko wasn't polite.

My experience in seeing fan boys at shows approach creators is that the majority WANT something, even as simple as information. Some are even rude about it - most are awkward or gushing - and a small handful are articulate and polite and know how to be respectful and carry a conversation. The creator owes them nothing. That's why Ditko stopped going to shows (only one I know of) - he didn't want people thinking he owed them some information or art or an autograph or a piece of him. To still have people approach him on the streets - how many times over 50 years do you suppose Ditko had to stop what he was doing, regardless of how important it may have been and actually, what? Explain to people his view on things? Knowing full well it will still be misinterpreted?

Nah. I'm sure that got old really quick.

 

[Sweet Lou 14]

2 minutes ago, Prince Namor said:

You're assuming the fan boys were polite and well spoken, and assuming that Ditko wasn't polite.

My experience in seeing fan boys at shows approach creators is that the majority WANT something, even as simple as information. Some are even rude about it - most are awkward or gushing - and a small handful are articulate and polite and know how to be respectful and carry a conversation. The creator owes them nothing. That's why Ditko stopped going to shows (only one I know of) - he didn't want people thinking he owed them some information or art or an autograph or a piece of him. To still have people approach him on the streets - how many times over 50 years do you suppose Ditko had to stop what he was doing, regardless of how important it may have been and actually, what? Explain to people his view on things? Knowing full well it will still be misinterpreted?

Nah. I'm sure that got old really quick.

 

There is nothing in Ditko's account one way or another about the fans' politeness or his.  Both are irrelevant anyway.  He made a judgment of their intellectual capacity and their level of development as free thinkers based on the question they asked, and clearly would have made the same judgment regardless of their demeanor.  How they conducted themselves was not the subject of his analysis and conclusion.

Everything you've said in your second paragraph above runs 100% counter to the point Ditko's convoluted essay seems to be trying to make.  He tells us that people thought he didn't want to speak to fans, but he wants us to believe that in fact this was a false assumption.  The fact that fanboys can be annoying, and your reasonable assumption that Ditko must have dealt with many such annoying fanboys, only serves to further support the conclusion those two particular fans made -- namely, that they ought to tread carefully when approaching him.

He proved them right.

[bc]

Any sweeping generalities about the stereotypical behavior of one group or another isn't going to result in the solution to the actual question.

-bc