My Amazing Comics Career With Steve Ditko

In which I am able to cross off another name from my "All time list of people I want to work with someday," but not in a very legitimate way.

You’ve heard of the many iconic talent team-ups in comics history: Lee and Kirby; Lee and Ditko; Byrne and Claremont; Adams and O’Neil. But have you heard of the even more iconic paring of Ditko and Willingham?

No, of course you haven’t, because it mostly didn’t happen at all. It only sort of happened.

I never met Steve Ditko (more’s the pity), but I did get to work with him once on a comics project… sort of.

In 1993 I was sharing a studio in sunny Pflugerville, Texas with Keith Wilson (Elementals; Scarlett; Spider-Ham) and Bill Williams (who would later go on to run Lone Star Press and write Punchline). Keith wrote some things, penciled some things, did some comics design work, but mostly he inked. He was hired by Jim Shooter (former Marvel Editor in Chief) to ink a book called Dark Dominion # 0, for his latest company, Defiant Comics.

Dark Dominion was going to be a series of normal comic books, but first it would be a comic story done entirely in trading cards (a stunt to take advantage of the trading card boom at the time), where each card depicted one panel of the story. Actually, there were a number of multiple-card panels, but mostly one card/one panel.

This trading card comic story was written by Jim Shooter and penciled by Steve Ditko.

When the Ditko artwork started filtering into the studio, I boldly announced, “There’s no way I’m going to pass up my one and only chance to work with Steve Ditko at least once in my life, so I’ll be inking some of these cards.” I didn’t ask. I just told him that was how it had to be.

“Fine,” says Keith, “but you have to try to ape my inking style.”

“Easy,” I say. (It wasn’t easy, and I don’t think I succeeded, but who cares, right? I get to ink Ditko.)

“No pay,” Keith said.

“No problem,” I said.

“And no credit,” he said.

“I can live with that. It’s only important that I know.”

“Fine,” he said. “You can ink these three cards that make up one panel.”

And so I did.

I inked the top three cards on this “page” of the story:

You can judge for yourself how well I did in aping Keith’s inking style.

Other than bragging, why is this important? I’m not sure, except that it’s one of the best instances in crossing one of the vital names off of my all-time list.

I suspect I’m not the only one in the comics business to have a list of those comics luminaries — not just the best, but personal heroes — you’d love to be able to work with one day. And I’ve been lucky in being able to cross off many who made my list. I got to talk to Jack Kirby twice, but never work with him. I missed getting to do anything with Joe Kubert.

But I succeeded in working at least once with Neal Adams (Fables # 150):

Berni (aka Bernie) Wrightson (House of Mystery):

Richard Corbin (House of Mystery):

Mark Shultz (Fables # 150):

Alan Moore (Tales of the Green Lantern Corps):

And many others.

I missed working with Mike Wieringo by a few months. We were deep into discussions of my writing a relaunch of his Tellos series for him to draw, when he died suddenly.

And I still have a few to go. As of this writing Barry Windsor Smith remains un-got, along with John Byrne, Dave Sim, Jose’ Luis Garcia Lopez, and probably others. But I live in hope.

And just that once, in that brief Camelot-like moment, I managed (through less than above-board means) to ink Steve Ditko.

Dear Everyone Working in Comics; Steady on and stay the course. Sometimes life hands you a win.