DITKO FINALLY LISTED AS
"AMAZING SPIDER-MAN"
CO-CREATOR!
Tuesday March 19, 2002
Did you think you'd live to see the day?
Sure, Marvel has acknowledged him in much more silent ways as the co-creator of Amazing Spider-Man, but original Spider-Man artist, and co-creator with Stan Lee, Steve Ditko has now been listed as co-creator as of AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #39 (ironic, given that in the original numbering, this was the first issue without Ditko back in 1966, and John Romita's first).
There was no official announcement of this from Marvel, but finally when some silly journalist is doing a small piece on Spider-man, and goes to pick up an issue to see who created the thing, Steve Ditko's name will be there! Only last month did I receive an e-mail from this site saying how shock the sender was to find out from my site that Stan Lee was not the sole creator or Spider-Man. In a Toronto paper just yesterday, a columnist called Stan Lee "creator" of the greatest pop culture icon of the past 40+ years.
To see it on the actual TITLE comic he helped create is something. Ditko has always been a trail-blazer in this regard, getting himself plotting credit on Amazing Spider-Man #25 (June 1965 cover date) long before Stan gave up that ghost to anyone else, and when promises were broken to Ditko, with regards to seeing moneys promised by Martin Goodman, publisher of Marvel Comics at the time, Ditko walked out the door, and really helped legitimize comics fandom by contributing his MR. A stories all over the place to fanzines, as well as co-publishing that material independently. I don't know if I am to believe...
"When does a man achieve victory? When after he has honestly applied himself to the task facing him, and having overcome it, is secure in the knowledge that whatever he has accomplished, the fruits of that goal belong to him! He will know... no one else matters." (a quote from the last panel of THE QUESTION'S book, Mysterious Suspense, Oct '68, from Charlton)
...or his recent attempts to set the record straight about his part in the co-creation of Spider-Man in THE COMICS newsletter, but I am glad it is here. Let's be real - we have the upcoming movie to thank. It was a good PR move for Marvel Comics to head off this issue (although I am sure plenty of editors at Marvel are happy to see it happen, too; no matter what the suits required).
Now we can sit back and laugh at all the attempts of journalists trying to get in touch with Steve for interviews about his co-creations come the release of the movie. They'll have no idea what hit them.
It's amazing how I use to think that I could reproduce someone's else copyrighted work - someone else's creation - with the justification that I wasn't making a profit. What I didn't realize way back then was that you are robbing that person of a chance to fully realize profit from their own created material.
I, too, use to hold up the excuse that artists owed us something and that it was THEIR fault they didn't keep their work in print, and that meant I could reproduce it because there was a NEED/DESIRE for it.
I'm casting a rather large net here, but one of the reason I believe 99% of all communist / fascist regimes perish, and have perished, is because the great thinkers born into that society die a spiritual death because they know they will have what they create ripped from them by those who run the society, for the GREATER GOOD of that society (usually meaning the powerful few who wish to satiate their own selfish whims).
I believe the consequence of that stealing is that A) the thinkers leave that society (Germany before WWII), or B) just give up and can't bother to create any more (the former Soviet Union). Why get out of bed if you aren't going to see the fruits of your labour? Isn't that what America, and Capitalism, was built upon?
I am now firmly of the belief that all decisions related to the use of one's creation must remain in the hands of those who own the creation. I say "own" because if you make something and choose to sell it off, then you made a conscious choice about your creation.
And I'm not wiping away "fair use". I think 99.9% of all creators know the value of "fair use" and don't have issues with a reviewer using a page or two for a review or a web site commentary. It simply stuns me when someone goes on and on about how they have the RIGHT to reprint stuff cause the creator owes us something, or that the creator should be able to pass on HIS CREATION to his next of kin, as if buying a copying of something endows the buyer
power of the original, and how it will be reproduced from here on out.
To those people, I say wait until you create something of your own, and have it taken from you. That logic tends to fall on deaf ears to those types of people, because the REASON they are trying to steal from the creator in the first place is because they will never create anything of value in their lives.
And to hear a fan of an artist take this tact, and then claim to love and respect that artist, is simply mind boggling to me. And in the comic book industry, too, where the creators had been screwed for so long.
It can be a long process, this respect of the sheer force of will power necessary to create something that will affect that many people, but it's probably the best praise - the best gift
in return - we can offer someone who has given so much to us.
Blake Bell
ditko37@sympatico.ca
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