Steve Ditko is, along with Jack ‘King’ Kirby, one of the most important visual stylists in comic book art. A key architect of Marvel’s Silver Age, Ditko famously co-created Spider-Man and Dr Strange and shaped their formative adventures between 1962 and 1966. His dynamic approach to storytelling combines iconic character design, idiosyncratic body language and surreal ‘cosmic’ scenarios. But while Kirby is widely acclaimed as a major influence on contemporary comic aesthetics, Ditko remains a reclusive and cultish figure, shunning interviews and earning a reputation as “the Thomas Pynchon of comics.” Ditko also warrants attention for being the only comic book artist to be discussed as much for his political philosophy as for his distinctive illustrations.
However, one of Ditko’s most memorable post-Marvel creations is Shade, the Changing Man, published by DC in June 1977. This regrettably short-lived series is one of Ditko’s most ambitious projects, and certainly his most baffling. A strange, erratic tale of inter-dimensional espionage and (literally) mind-warping underwear, Shade defies adequate summary or satisfactory explanation. It does, however, include some feverishly inventive visual ideas, thanks chiefly to the possibilities of Shade’s M-Vest, a piece of alien technology that induced fearsome hallucinations in those around him. The series is also famed for the Freudian nightmare of its central relationship - Shade is pursued by his homicidal former girlfriend - and for a number of inexplicable jumps in narrative.
Rac Shade! God, how I loved that comic. Another sin of DC Comics. Another was killing Jack Kirby's Fourth World.
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