DC Archives: The Action Heroes Vol.2 DC Comics By Steve Ditko & various (with Alex Toth & John Byrne.) £49.99
This volume is lavish and sturdy, packed with comic book magic and with a dash of off-kilter philosophy underpinning all the pop-kitsch antics. It covers the end of his run on Captain Atom and his complete, if brief, runs on Blue Beetle and The Question. There is some ancillary B/W material by Ditko/Byrne to tie up loose ends from Captain Atom and a Question story drawn by Alex Toth. It’s well worth the steep price for anyone who has a liking for visits to Ditko’s avenging world.
The Captain Atom stories are pretty typical of super-fare during this period, bland, unengaging and free from any distinctive qualities except the astonishingly silly plots. I had to flip back on a couple of occasions to remind myself how the good Captain had escaped almost certain death, which isn’t the hallmark of a gripping narrative. It doesn’t help that Ditko’s pencils are largely blanded out by his inkers. In fact Ditko seems like a missing man in these tales, more of an absence than a presence. It’s when he brings his startling worldview into play that his material comes alive, as it does with the Blue Beetle and The Question.
Blue Beetle starts off as a kind of science orientated variation of Spider-Man. There are gadgets, wisecracks and angst; and a torturous initial plot regarding the whereabouts of Dan Garret, the old Blue Beetle. In fact for a while BB seems to spend roughly half of each issue asking the question: “Where’s Dan Garret?” and this reaches a comical height when he spends two pages repeating the question to a nonplussed villain who just wants to outline his diabolical plot, and who eventually tells BB to just shut up. After the Dan Garret plot gets dropped Ditko just goes Full Mental Ditko, and the already entertaining BB improves drastically…but first…
The Question is just the dreamiest. What an absolutely fantastically simple but totally amazing character design; a be-suited man with NO FACE! His ‘power’ is being holier than thou to a truly special degree. Asking The Q to compromise is akin to asking him to engage in a lewd act with a dog. On Live TV. Initially, limited to only a few pages at the back of The Blue Beetle, The Question scampers about like a sociopathic Spirit delivering a fast and nasty parable with each outing. In Mysterious Suspense #1, however, The Q gets a full comic to play with and Ditko uses it to tell us in true Old Testament mad prophet stylee what it is that makes a (Ditko) hero. It is a fantastic example of the polemical funnybook; the Q being the fedora sporting embodiment of Ditko’s credo: “There is Black, there is White and there is nothing in between.” And while that kind of thinking may make for a poor Social Worker it makes for great comics. And, yes, these are great comics.
The Greatest of The Great here though is Blue Beetle #4. Until buying this volume I had never encountered this comic, now I will never forget it. This is unparalleled Ditko; with all the polish and confidence befitting a Legend. The art is loose and limber, the storytelling deft and true. Script-wise, of course it’s a little clunky and verbose, but it is primarily a polemic after all. Ditko wants there to be no doubt about what he is saying; humanity needs a Heroic Ideal, and those that push for heroes with feet of clay are only acting out of self-loathing and the self-serving need to drag everyone down to their unhappy level. Or, he’s used his magic Ditko powers and anticipated the “mature” Super Hero trend of the last twenty some years and judged it wanting.
Either way I thought it was a great message, entertainingly delivered in an over the top comic book style. A bit like being accosted by a chatty Ayn Rand dressed as a clown while the acid she spiked your drink with twenty minutes earlier kicks smoothly in. Well, nothing at all like that really. But something entirely like a smashing comic book. Yeah, just like that.
While Ditko will never be acclaimed as one of the greatest writers in the medium his ideas make him one of the more interesting. His resolute refusal to give the insidiously corrupting and currently popular doctrine of moral equivalence any credence also serves to warm my black heart. Your mileage on this latter point and his philosophy in general may, however, vary. But, his uniquely simultaneously surreally rubbery and grimly anxious art does unarguably mark him out as a visionary pioneer and will forever make Steve Ditko comics the safest place in the world for your imagination to play. Mysteriously, of the three characters here, only the blandest still survives in current DC continuity. Make of that what you will, I make of it this; The Comics needs more people like Steve Ditko, people with personality. And talent.
