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Why Steve Ditko left Spider-man/Marvel
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Started by Prince Namor,

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Prince Namor

Prince Namor

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Personally I think it's pretty clear what happened.

As Lee and Ditko continued to collaborate on Spider-man, Ditko started to contribute more and more. Stan's duties grew as Marvel's success grew and he just couldn't put as much into any of the original books as he may have once did. He was building the brand. He was merging a Universe. He was giving a unique voice to all of these creations, but it was stretching Lee thin.

And Ditko started asking for plotting credit.

Stan wanted to be the voice of Marvel and this rubbed him the wrong way. But unlike, Wally Wood on Daredevil or Ayers on Sgt. Fury, he had to worry that the success of Spider-man (already becoming Marvel's top selling book) could be in jeopardy if he lost Ditko. (Of course we'd later learn that, the character was so great, it didn't matter - OR Romita's take was so good it didn't matter). he couldn't bully Ditko as he had less successful artists.

So he ignored Ditko. Left him to do it all himself.

And eventually Ditko realized that wasn't fair and moved on. 

Stan commented on it from the time Ditko left, up until the very end. It mattered how it was perceived to Stan.

Ditko waited nearly 50 YEARS to comment on it. It was just a job to him that he left.

Edited by Prince Namor
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Prince Namor

Prince Namor

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(From the perspective of Dick Ayers, with Roy Thomas in Alter-Ego Magazine): “Stan said, ‘I can’t think of a story for Sgt. Fury. We won’t have an issue unless you think of something.”

When Ayers requested a plot credit Stan told him, “Since when did you develop an ego? Get out of here!”

Ayers wrote a wordless story (And not a Word was Spoken) for Two-Gun Kid #61.

Ayers submitted a payment requisition to Stan for the plot feeling he should be paid more for writing the wordless story. Stan and Ayers argued, and Stan agreed to pay Ayers for five pages of lettering.

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Prince Namor

Prince Namor

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From the perspective of Stan Goldberg in an interview with Jim Amash from Alter-Ego Magazine edited by Roy Thomas.

GOLDBERG: “Jack would sit there at lunch, and tell us these great ideas about what he was going to do next. It was like the ideas were bursting from every pore of his body. It was very interesting because he was a fountain of ideas. One day Jack came in and had this 20-page story and proceeded to tell us he was having his house and studio painted. I asked, “Where did you draw the story?” Jack said,”I put my board on the stair banister, and drew it.”

GOLDBERG:” Stan would drive me home and we’d plot our stories in the car. I’d say to Stan,”How’s this? Millie loses her job.” He’d say,”Great! Give me 25 pages.” And that took him off the hook. One time I was in Stan’s office and I told him, “I don’t have another plot.” Stan got out of his chair and walked over to me, looked me in the face, and said very seriously, “I don’t ever want to hear you say you can’t think of another plot.” Then he walked back and sat down in his chair. He didn’t think he needed to tell me anything more.”

JIM AMISH:” Sounds like you were doing most of the writing then.”

GOLDBERG: “Well, I was.”

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bc

bc

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One thing that seems to be a common thread thru all these accounts is that between '61 to '65 Marvel was experiencing massive success and greatly expanding their titles. This likely put great pressure on Stan to stay engaged in all this material being produced by his creative bullpen. Originally, the artists all were collaborating directly with Stan, but at a certain point, that became nearly impossible. Got to remember, when the core team got together after the Atlas Implosion, they were only permitted to put out 8 (or so) titles a month. Plenty of direct collaboration at that point.

By the mid-60's the number of titles had more than doubled (and would quickly double again by the late '60s). Marvel was getting into mass media & merchandising as well as other periodical formats and Stan was part of those ventures as well. The Marvel Universe was becoming a mature global brand and therefore some changes to the business model were needed to support this scalability. Not saying anyone was at fault either way, but businesses evolve and expand or fall by the wayside.

I worked at a very small company once, me and the owner would hang out all the time. Then business exploded, over a hundred employees were added very quickly and the owner had better things to do than meet with me as frequently as before. I was cool with that as it really had no impact on my success. I could easily see how this may have offended others who were more involved in the actual creation of the intellectual property.

-bc

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Prince Namor

Prince Namor

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2 minutes ago, bc said:

One thing that seems to be a common thread thru all these accounts is that between '61 to '65 Marvel was experiencing massive success and greatly expanding their titles. This likely put great pressure on Stan to stay engaged in all this material being produced by his creative bullpen. Originally, the artists all were collaborating directly with Stan, but at a certain point, that became nearly impossible. Got to remember, when the core team got together after the Atlas Implosion, they were only permitted to put out 8 (or so) titles a month. Plenty of direct collaboration at that point.

By the mid-60's the number of titles had more than doubled (and would quickly double again by the late '60s). Marvel was getting into mass media & merchandising as well as other periodical formats and Stan was part of those ventures as well. The Marvel Universe was becoming a mature global brand and therefore some changes to the business model were needed to support this scalability. Not saying anyone was at fault either way, but businesses evolve and expand or fall by the wayside.

I worked at a very small company once, me and the owner would hang out all the time. Then business exploded, over a hundred employees were added very quickly and the owner had better things to do than meet with me as frequently as before. I was cool with that as it really had no impact on my success. I could easily see how this may have offended others who were more involved in the actual creation of the intellectual property.

-bc

I agree. The growth played a huge part in what happened.

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shadroch

shadroch

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It may be a minor thing, but Ditko refers to Sol Brodsky as Stans assistant. Sol was the Production Manager and had also worked with Steve cobbling together Daredevil #1 when the artist blew the deadline. It seems very dismissive.

Ditko seems to have been a very difficult person to work with, although his long time editor at Charlton says the opposite. 

He was, and remains a mystery to me. Outside of Spiderman, I don't like his art at all.  When he did some Rom stories, I almost stopped reading that book.

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Prince Namor

Prince Namor

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27 minutes ago, jason4 said:

Isnt there tons of topics already on this on this forum?

I'm out 

The article by Ditko has never been shown here. Until a few days ago I never even knew it existed. 

Glad I could answer your question in a topic you have no interest in wanting to be a part of. :whistle:

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Jeffro.

Jeffro.

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2 hours ago, jason4 said:

Isnt there tons of topics already on this on this forum?

I'm out 

Would you prefer endless ebay threads and people posting whatever stream on consciousness nonsense that pops into their heads? That's basically what comics general is now, on some days anyway. At least this is legitimate comic book talk and is information not generally known.  

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Lazyboy

Lazyboy

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9 minutes ago, Inappropriate Spock said:

It's not a shill account. Anyone can change their display name by going into their account settings. >> https://www.cgccomics.com/account/ That's not the same as creating a new 'shill' account.

Anyone? Even you? :baiting:

What's with all the (relatively) recent name changes by longtime/high-post members, anyway?

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kav

kav

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33 minutes ago, Inappropriate Spock said:

It's not a shill account. Anyone can change their display name by going into their account settings. >> https://www.cgccomics.com/account/ That's not the same as creating a new 'shill' account.

Ah-thanks.

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