CENSORED/ALTERED DITKO by Blake Bell

Censorship has been around longer than Steve Ditko, and while he has always been held in the higher regard as an artist, that hasn't placed him above having his artwork altered. The Comics Code Authority kicked in around 1955, and kicked out alot of the "filth" (aka anything interesting) that was supposedly perverting young minds. And while one may be able to make an argument against rampant depictions and rape and pillage in a children's medium, the Code had set up stringent rules of conduct to manipulate the reader's thought process, as it related to good and evil. The Code was to be a moral authority, and the results could be rather humourous at times. But the task of altering artwork for the finished product wasn't left to Kirby alone. No, even Jack had his work gone over and, in the example below, Ditko was the man given the task of shoring up the finished product. On your left is a page from FANTASTIC FOUR #20, with Kirby pencils and Ayers inks. But Stan Lee must have found something wrong with Panel 3.....

.....as one can see by the detail on your right of Panel 3, Ditko redrew said panel and pasted over the results. The police are clearly Ditko figures. Stan must have found Kirby's establishing shot to be wanting, or needed one added to give a better perspective on what the police were up against fighting the Mole Man. Clearly, if you were a superior artist, and/or just in the New York offices that day, and Stan needed a correction done, you were the man. Eventually John Romita Sr. would move into the full-time job of art director and ended up responsible for most of the art corrections, but in the early Marvel days, Ditko and Kirby were the dominant artists in every way. IF YOU HAVE ANY OTHER EXAMPLES OF DITKO (or any other Marvel Silver Age artist) BEING CENSORED OR ALTERED, PLEASE E-MAIL ME, SO THAT I CAN ADD IT TO THIS SECTION. YOU WILL RECEIVE FULL CREDIT FOR YOUR CONTRIBUTIONS.

The Artist Main Page DITKO LOOKED UP