Ditko at Charlton: Part 3

THOUGH STEVE DITKO'S BEST-KNOWN, CHARLTON COMICS SUPERHERO STRIP is Captain Atom, he created other heroes for the company that may not be as well-remembered but are every bit as fascinating.

Captain Atom finds himself saddled with a new, unwanted partner by the military brass, though his relationship with Nightshade would develop in unexpected directions as the series unfolded.

Ditko wasted no time in adding a new supporting heroine in the Captain Atom title, issue 82 (Sep 1966), Nightshade. Though scripter Dave Kaler is later credited as the creator of the character, Ditko certainly would have a hand in the overall look of the character and the design of her costume, and possibly included her in his plot before Kaler even saw the pages.

In their first pairing, Captain Atom and Nightshade learn each other's true identities.

At first, Nightshade is portrayed as a government-sanctioned agent, skilled in hand-to-hand combat, though Kaler hints that there are some other abilities there which will be revealed later. It doesn't take long for Captain Atom and Nightshade to share the secret of their true identities and we learn that Eve Eden is the daughter of a prominent Washington politician. It's never explained how Nightshade - essentially a masked vigilante - came to be accepted by the US intelligence community.

The art from Jim Aparo is on the rough side, with little indication of how fast his talent would mature under Dick Giordano's watchful eye, and the scripting is equally stilted, but note Kaler's credit as creator and scripter.

After appearing as a supporting character in Captain Atom 82 (Sep 1966), 85 (Mar 1967), 86 (Jun 1967), Nightshade got her own series in Captain Atom 87 (Aug 1967), scripted by Dave Kaler and drawn by a very raw Jim Aparo. This is where Kaler starts to backfill Eve Eden's origin, revealing how she is taught the ability to blend into the shadows by a mother who doesn't appear to be of this world.

The seven-page first instalment opens with Nightshade undergoing Jiu-Jitsu practice at The Pentagon. Returning home, we're privy to a scene in which Eve's father, Senator Eden, soliloquises how disappointed he is in his "party girl" daughter - he clearly has no idea she's risking her life daily in defence of her country. His ruminations are interrupted by a threatening phone call from a criminal calling himself The Image. Unaware of all that, Eve is in another room casting her mind back to how her mother introduced her to the Land of Nightshades and her Shadow powers. Lost in her reveries, Eve is unaware that The Image has entered her room through a mirror, intent on kidnapping her. Eve allows herself to be dragged back through the mirror, as kicking The Image's butt would give her secret identity away to her dad. And that's the cliffhanger for this issue.

We never find out who The Image is, or why he's doing these horrible things, but it doesn't really seem to matter. The character's more of a McGuffin to facilitate the origin story of Nightshade.

In her second solo outing - Captain Atom 88 (Oct 1967) -  Nightshade, still captured by The Image, casts her mind back to her first trip to the Land of Nightshades where her family was attacked by the forces of The Incubus. In the melee Eve's mother is mortally injured, it is only the darkness that signals arrival of The Incubus himself that allows Eve to escape back to our world with her mother, leaving her brother behind. This inspires Eve to create darkness in her cell by breaking the light fixture with a well-aimed shoe. She returns home just in time to switch to Nightshade and save her father from The Image.

In the space of seven pages, we see a little of Eve's "jet set" lifestyle at a swanky Washingto party, learn that Judomaster's former partner trained Eve in Jiu-Jitsu, and see Eve up against an old enemy.

Nightshade's final solo tale, in Captain Atom 89 (Dec 1967), pits her against a familiar foe. At a Washington ball with her father, Eve thwarts a daring jewel robbery by Jewelee (last seen in Captain Atom 85), though Punch is nowhere in sight. Though the episode is slight, we do learn that the 14 year old Even was trained in Jiu-Jitsu by Tiger, who had been Judomaster's teen sidekick years earlier, though no more is made of that connection.

If you weren't paying attention, you might've missed the announcement of a new superhero at the foot of Captain Atom 83's cover.

A little earlier than all this, in the issue of Captain Atom immediately following Nightshade's first appearance, Steve Ditko revived an old Charlton hero with a brand new twist.

If The Blue Beetle is wanted by the authorities, how come he doesn't wear a mask in his second - costumed - outing?

The Blue Beetle had enjoyed a couple of short runs at Charlton over the years, but had first appeared in Mystery Men Comics 1 (Aug 1939), scripted by Will Eisner, drawn by Charles Wojtkoski (under the house pen-name of Charles Nicholas) and published Fox Features. Dan Garret is a serving police officer who also fights crime in a blue business suit and a mask as The Blue Beetle, a bit like The Spirit, really. No explanation is given for his crusade in his debut, and his Beetle persona is considered an outlaw by the police. By his second appearance in Mystery Men Comics 2 (Sep 1939) he was wearing a skintight blue leotard, but no mask. And you'll be relieved to hear that with his third outing, he was sporting a domino mask to preserve his secret identity.

The Blue Beetle was the cover star for most of the Mystery Men Comics run, which ended in 1942. The Blue Beetle's own title did better, lasting until 1947.

In Mystery Men Comics 7 (Feb 1940), The Blue Beetle was cover-featured and bumped to the front of the book to be the lead feature. In April 1940, the first issue of the character's self-titled book came out, a mix of reprinted stories from a few months earlier and an all-new, 13-page origin story.

Blue Beetle 54 (Mar 1948) was specifically highlighted in the notorious anti-comics book, Seduction of the Innocent by Dr Frederic Wertham. "Children call these 'headlight' comics."

Later issues of Blue Beetle featured "good girl art" covers, many drawn by Jack Kamen, who would go on to higher profile work as one of EC's key artists. There was also a syndicated newspaper strip in 1940, drawn by soon-to-be legend Jack Kirby.

The first run of Blue Beetle lasted a good ten years, by which time, the comics-buying public was tiring of costumed heroes and other genres like horror and romance were on the rise. For reasons I'm not too clear about, issues 12 - 30 of Blue Beetle were published by Holyoke rather than Fox Features. And when publisher Victor Fox filed for bankruptcy in 1950, Blue Beetle was sold to Charlton Comics.

All the mid-1950s Charlton Blue Beetles featured covers by Dick Giordano. Issue 19 was reprinted in the UK by Miller and Sons in 1955.

The character languished at Charlton for five years before publisher John Santiago decided to do anything with it. Then at the tail end of 1954, Charlton published Blue Beetle 18 (Feb 1955), continuing its numbering from The Thing and reprinting Fox's Blue Beetle 40 in its entirety. Blue Beetle 19 (Apr 1955) was also all reprint, but issue 20 had two new stories by Ted Galindo and Ray Austin, as did issue 21 (Aug 1955). The character went into comics limbo for another decade, until Charlton dusted the character off and tried another run in 1964.

Irving Waldman had been buying old printers' plates and reusing them to reprint comics from defunct publishers. He probably retitled the above comics because he knew Charlton held the rights to Blue Beetle ... but he was still on the wrong side of copyright law.

This may have been prompted by IW's copyright-infringing reprint of Blue Beetle 46 (Jul 1947), re-titled The Human Fly 10, in 1963. In this version, Blue Beetle 1 (Jun 1964), Dan Garret is repurposed into Dan Garrett, archeologist. On a dig in Egypt, Dan is gifted a blue scarab which gives him super-powers: flight, strength, bulletproofery and Egypti-vision. He just needs to speak the mystic words "Kaji Dah" and he is transformed into The Blue Beetle. Not a million miles away from the original Captain Marvel, in fact.

Really not sure why The Blue Beetle is swinging down on a rope, when he has the power of flight. His super-abilities stem from a scarab ring he finds in an ancient Egyptian tomb.

The execution of these stories is pretty b-team, even by Charlton standards. The art by Bill Fraccio and Tony Tallarico is pretty forgettable and Joe Gill is phoning in his script. There's no supporting cast to speak of and Blue Beetle's powers seem a bit ill-defined. But then, what do I know? George R. R. Martin seems to like it.

Here's the Game of Thrones author George Martin damning Blue Beetle 1 with faint praise.

The title ran for five issues, then inexplicably changed its numbering, continuing as issues 50 - 54. There was no change in the creative team however and the stories lumbered on in the same vein. I did try to read them, but after issue 50, I was losing the will to live.

So no great surprise then that, when this incarnation of The Blue Beetle was put out of its misery, Steve Ditko thought he could do a better job and likely pitched the idea of a new, improved Blue Beetle to incoming Charlton editor Dick Giordano. The reason I think the proposal would have come from Ditko is the evident relish with which he tackled the project.

The first seven-page tale is such a perfect introduction to the new Blue Beetle that I wonder if Ditko didn't just draw this up and present it to Giordano as the proposal for the series.

Unlike the Captain Atom stories he was pencilling at the same time, here Ditko is plotting, and inking as well, with Gary Friedrich drafted in to fill the speech balloons. The first episode, in Captain Atom 83 (Nov 1966), drops us straight into the action, the BB flying his Beetlecraft high above the city searching for signs of crime. He breaks up a robbery and turns the bad guys over to the police. But as the incident unfolds we learn from the dialogue that this is Ted Kord, who evidently knows Dan Garret (one "t"), doesn't have any superpowers but does have access to superior tech like a mask that can't be removed and advanced combat skills.

The second instalment introduces us to the supporting cast and establishes that this Blue Beetle exists in the same continuity as the original Blue (Dan Garret) Beetle.

The Blue Beetle story in Captain Atom 84 (Jan 1967) started to flesh out the scenario. We learn that the Beetlemobile - or Bug as BB calls it - can travel underwater to access Ted Kord's lab, and that Kord is a research scientist. We also find out that he has an assistant called Tracey and that he recently returned from Pago Island. When a masked criminal breaks into the lab, The Blue Beetle is on hand to protect Tracey, but gets beaten down. Tracey calls the police while BB sneaks off to change, but when Detective Fischer shows up, he's not there about the burglary, he wants to talk to Kord about the disappearance of Dan Garret.

Detective Fischer becomes Detective Fisher in this episode. Seems that Dan Garret's not the only one who can change the spelling of his name.

Most of the third episode of Blue Beetle in Captain Atom 85 (Mar 1967) has BB battling a spy who hijacks a commercial airliner and the foreign submarine that he tries to escape in. There's a brief opening scene in which the police question Ted Kord about the disappearance of Dan Garret but release him for lack of evidence. So bit of a holding episode, really ... but excellent art from Ditko.

In the last part of this back-up miniseries, we learn the identity of the masked man who raided Ted Kord's lab in issue 84 and and led to believe that something happened to Dan Garret on Pago Island that Ted Kord was witness to.

The final episode in Captain Atom 86 (May 1967) ties up most of the loose ends from previous instalments. BB tracks the masked robber who invaded Ted Kord's research lab looking for tech to steal, defeats him and hands him over to the police. Lieutenant Fisher (he's been promoted) questions Tracey about the mysterious death of Dan Garret and Kord soliloquises about some terrible secret concerning Pago Island that he can't possibly reveal, setting us all up for the first issue of BB in his own magazine, Blue Beetle 1 (Jun 1967).

I thought the Squid Gang's uniform looked a lot like those of the Master Planner, as seen in Amazing Spider-Man 30 (Nov 1965). Ditko seemed to favour those coverall costumes that made the henchmen indistinguishable from each other.

In his first full-length outing, the Blue Beetle takes on The Squid Gang, so-called because they specialise in water-based crimes and use the suckers on their costumes to climb up sheer surfaces, like the sides of boats. The leader of the Squid Gang turns out to be Todd Van, wastrel scion of a rich family. Just a couple of the story's 18 pages are devoted to the Mystery of Pago Island. The rest is non-stop Ditko action as BB rough-and-tumbles with Todd Van's endless supply of goons. I'll deal with the seven-page Question backup further down this page.

Most of Blue Beetle 2 hasTed Kord telling his comely assistant Tracey all about the events that led to Dan Garret's fate on Pago Island and the part his secretly-evil Uncle Jarvis played in all that.

The cover of Blue Beetle 2 (Aug 1967) promised to reveal the awful secret of Pago Island, and it's not without further shocking revelations. Within the first couple of pages, Blue Beetle reveals to Tracey that he is in reality Ted Kord. Then he goes on to tell how his Uncle Jarvis tricked him into assisting in the development of a platoon of invincible robots and how he'd enlisted the help of college acquaintance Dan Garret to investigate the Pago Island workshop of Jarvis. No shock, then that Jarvis was still alive and had perfected his army of deadly robots.

Ted Kord promised his friend and predecessor Dan Garret that he would continue as The Blue Beetle, but without the help of the blue scarab ring, the source of Garret's superpowers (there's a loose end if ever I saw one).

Captured and about to be crushed by the robots, Dan was forced to switch the The Blue Beetle and use his superpowers to save Ted. Seeing his defeat was imminent, Jarvis caused his robots to explode, accidentally killing himself but also mortally injuring Dan Garret. Dan made Ted promise to continue the legacy of The Blue Beetle - tellingly, without passing the source of his powers, the blue scarab, over to his successor.

The remainder of the story's 18 pages has Ted Kord battling a couple of surviving Pago Island robots and sealing up the entrance to Jarvis' underground lab, though we're left with a teaser that one robot remains functional.

I quite like The Madmen Gang, though ordinary thugs in zany costumes is idea that Ditko would return to more than once - The Supreme One and his followers in Beware the Creeper 3 (Sep 1968) is one example.

Blue Beetle 3 (Oct 1967) opens with Ted Kord trying to prevent a robbery by a new gang in town, The Madmen, but is overwhelmed by weight of numbers and loses his "Beetle Gun". While the public speculates on the nature of the gun, Dan Garret miraculously turns up at his old apartment, alerting the suspicions of Lt Fisher. As the Madmen gang terrorise the city with the Beetle's mysterious gun, Fisher is more concerned with tracking down Dan Garret and, in the mother of all coincidences, spots Garret on a city street while interrogating Ted Kord.

The mystery of Pago Island deepens and cop Fisher and Ted Kord spot a presumed missing-or-dead Dan Garret on a city street ... and the true nature of The Beetle Gun is revealed.

The Blue Beetle tracks down The Madmen Gang and retrieves his gun, which turns out to be nothing more menacing than a variation on a camera flash which emits a blinding light, momentarily disorienting the Madmen. We'll take up the trail of Dan Garret in the next issue.

Who are the Men of the Mask? Religious cult or everyday thugs? And why is Dan Garret trying to steal a country's cultural heritage for his own gain? The mystery's not as obscure as you might think.

Two months later, In Blue Beetle 4 (Dec 1967), Steve Ditko would combine his often-used motif of thugs-in-masks with the main sub-plot that's been running through all these stories so far - how can Dan Garret be walking around when Ted Kord saw him die on Pago Island?

Kord has discovered that Garret had planned an expedition to learn about the Men of the Mask, a renegade tribe that is said to guard a fabulous treasure among the Mountains of Mider in Central Asia. Garret is revered by Sheik Abuta, the ruler of the tiny country, as he has always turned any discoveries over to the people. Ted Kord tracks him there, but is temporarily captured by the Men of the Mask. Garret's expedition also comes under attack, and only The Blue Beetle's timely intervention saves him from certain death.

Curiously, Dan Garret doesn't recognise The Blue Beetle, and even attacks him. In the struggle Garret's mask is torn off and his true identity is revealed as Dan Greer, Garret's former assistant, who has been planning to find and keep the treasure for himself. Greer obligingly falls into a handy volcanic crevasse and the story of "Dan Garret" is officially over.

"Destroyer of Heroes" isn't the best ending for the Charlton Blue Beetle run, but it's interesting to see Vic Sage guest-star in the Blue Beetle strip, even if he isn't given very much to do.

The story in Blue Beetle 5 (Feb 1968) is quite a change of pace from what has gone before - Steve Ditko takes another swipe at nihilism in the the art world, crosses Vic (The Question) Sage over into the Beetle story and takes the preachiness up a notch. Hugo, an aspiring but untalented sculptor, wants to rid the world of heroic symbolism and will go to any lengths to achieve that, including destroying works of art. He forges a suit of armour based on a sculpture - "Our Man" - which depicts humans as heartless and sets off on his quest, only to be thwarted by The Blue Beetle.

That is a lot of Randian monologues going on here. I have to wonder what ten-year old would read this stuff and think, "Yeah, Steve's got a point about the nature of negative depictions in art and its effects on mankind."

That's kind of it - but there is a lot of sermonising from almost every member of the cast, so you could be forgiven for scanning over some of the panels. But it's the most philosophical tale of the run, even to the extent of not punishing the villain formally, but leaving him to languish in a prison of his own making. Quite where Ditko was planning to take the series next is anyone's guess, though the story prepared for Blue Beetle 6 would later appear in the fanzine Contemporary Pictorial Literature (CPL).

I love the idea of an invisibility suit that renders the wearer invisible but not the suit itself. It makes for some bizarre imagery, which could only be created by Steve Ditko.

The true final episode of Steve Ditko's Blue Beetle concerned the invention of an exoskeleton that makes its wearer invisible. Ted Kord is present at the unveiling of the technology, but when a mysterious assailant clobbers Kord and make off with the suit, Ted finds himself under suspicion. The Blue Beetle tracks the wearer of the suit as he commits multiple robberies, finally beating him in a six-page fistfight. And when the police unmask hm, he turns out to be shady gambler Amos Fend. He's also found to be dead. Now The Beetle is under suspicion of murder.

Somewhere around the middle of the story, Ditko puts a passionate defence of the selflessness of science in Tracey's mouth. And Ted Kord's final speech could be talking about today's populist politics.

Though not quite as much of a sermon as the story in Blue Beetle 5, this tale does manage to squeeze in some of Ditko's thoughts on cognitive dissonance, with Kord telling Tracey, "Most people aren't interested in truth or fact! Even when it's presented to them, they don't want to judge for themselves, especially if it goes against what others believe." Preachy, yes, but probably more true in 2025 than it was in 1967.

Overall I really enjoyed this run of The Blue Beetle. Ditko was putting in pretty much the same effort on the art as he was on his Amazing Spider-Man stories. Ditko was also scripting, though the credit was given to D. C. (Dave) Glanzman, brother to Sam and also a Charlton scriptwriter. Quite why editor Dick Giordano asked for and obtained permission to use Glanzman's name isn't known. It wasn't at Ditko's request, as Steve had told Robin Snyder in Heroes Comic 29, "The Blue Beetle (my version) and the Question were my stories but there was editing and revising to some degree by someone. Giordano added the Glanzman name to my stories. I do not know why, when and where."

Detail from the front cover of Blue Beetle 1.

In the back of all these issues of Blue Beetle, Charlton were running another Ditko creation, The Question. The five seven-page stories introduce us to Vic Sage, an uncompromising news anchor with Worldwide Broadcasting, and his supporting cast. The Questions unique gimmick is that his blank calling card mysteriously manifests a question mark .. well, that and his unremovable blank facemask. Oh yes, and his unmatched hand-to-hand combat skills. And there's his unwavering Randian principles, as well.

In the first few pages, Steve Ditko tells us everything we need to know about Vic (The Question) Sage's world, his powers and his stance on law and order.

The first episode, in Blue Beetle 1, pits The Question against an illegal gambling ring run by Lou Dicer and an unknown sleeping partner. After Vic Sage blasts his "law-abiding" viewers for enabling gangsters like Dicer to operate, The Question roughs up some of Dicer's thugs until one gives up Dicer's hideout. The Question overhears Dicer set up a rendezvous with his silent partner and alerts the police to the meeting point. As the police swoop in to make the arrest, Sage and his team are on hand to film the whole thing, and Dicer's partner is unmasked to be Jim Lark, an executive at WWB. The episode ends with WWB management trying to persuade station owner Sam Starr to bury Sage's report as it'll make WWB look bad. But Starr, like Vic Sage, will not suppress the truth.

Ditko uses the story to rail against those who achieve success through the efforts of others. It's a common theme in Ditko's work.

In Blue Beetle 2, The Question battles The Banshee, a disgruntled assistant, Max Bine, who killed his mentor and stole a flying rig developed for a circus act. Using the suit, Bine commits a series of escalating robberies until he comes to the attention of The Question. Meanwhile, Vic Sage finds himself pursued by Sam Starr's wastrel daughter, Celia, though he's clearly not interested. It's just not clear to her. Bine is not so much defeated by The Question as by his own machinations, as a rising storm sweeps both him and his flying suit out to sea.

One of the more direct adventures of The Question, this one involves the owners of a sketchy construction company bickering among themselves while one murders the rest. Note the Creeper-style "ha-ha"s in the third page above.

In the third episode of The Question, someone is drowning the owners of the A Square Construction company on dry land, and a deep-sea diver is witnessed running from the scene. Vic Sage is already investigating shady doings at the company, so it's not long before The Question gets involved. Not surprisingly, the killer in the diving suit turns out to be one of the co-owners of the construction company, and is handed over to the police by The Question. It's a fairly routine action adventure story with little of Ditko's esoteric philosophising. Maybe he'd been asked to reel it back in a bit?Or perhaps it was just the shorter six pages didn't allow for it.

No reason is offered for having Steve Skeates (under the pen-name "Warren Savin"), put the words in the balloons rather than Steve Ditko doing it himself. But since Ditko was back scripting in Blue Beetle 5, perhaps this was a deadline issue.

With episode 4, Steve Skeates had been drafted in to supply the dialogue for the eight-page story. Yet for all that, this instalment is quite a bit more Randian than the last. The plot has a convicted embezzler Nat Kat seeking revenge on Vic Sage by hiring a hitman to kill him. Tracey gets to call out Kat for his hypocrisy in a speech that could well have been written by Ditko. The final page of the story is pretty bleak, where The Question leaves to two villains to die in the sewers because he won't risk his own neck to save them.

It's Vic Sage persecuting Boris Ebar for his beliefs in this final episode of the Question mini-series in the back of Blue Beetle 5. Is "Boris Ebar" an oblique reference to Russia in this almost allegorical tale?

In the last issue of this run of Blue Beetle, the Question story ties in to the main Blue Beetle tale, with pompous art critic Boris Ebar as the driving force behind the plot. Ebar becomes obsessed with destroying a painting owned by Vic Sage that he'd criticised as worthless. Ditko devotes a lot of speech balloon acreage debating himself on nihilistic versus humanistic art. It's not the best finale to the series, as it gets a bit bogged down in talkiness and could have used more action. But wait ... it's not the end for The Question yet.

Starting a new title from issue 1 is an unusual move for Charlton ... normally, they would have just retitled an existing series to save Post Office registration money.

It seems very likely that Steve Ditko had prepared further episodes of The Question before the decision was taken to cancel Blue Beetle with issue 5. Rather than letting these languish on the shelf Charlton took the unusual decision to instigate a new title - Mysterious Suspense - as a way of getting the remaining 25 pages of material off their ledgers.

It certainly feels like this is three shorter episodes rather than a single 25 page instalment. Each section appears to have been drawn as a back-up story for Blue Beetle, then reworked slightly for Mysterious Suspense. And Ditko spends a lot more time on Vic Sage fighting against corruption both inside and outside the television network WWB than he does on The Question.

The Question montage above doesn't look like it was drawn at the same time as the rest of the art, and might well have been Dikto's pitch artwork for the series - which would explain why the story is 25 pages long instead of three lots of eight pages.

The result is a rather talky tale in which The Question doesn't fully appear until page 13, leaving lots of room for lecturing from Vic about loyalty and people making decisions for themselves.

It's an interesting - if not entirely satisfying - coda to the age of Charlton Action Heroes.

An ad for the Charlton Action Heroes line that appeared in Blue Beetle 2.

There were other Charlton superheroes during the Dick Giordano tenure, just not drawn by Ditko. For that reason, I didn't follow Thunderbolt or Peacemaker, but I did enjoy Judomaster who, unlike the others, operated during World War II.

I'm sure you don't need me to identify the above Charlton Action Heroes and their Watchmen counterparts, do you?

And, famously, when Alan Moore first pitched The Watchmen series to DC comics, he wanted to use the Charlton Action Heroes. But DC had plans to revive the line and bring the characters into DC continuity so that idea was nixed. Undeterred, Moore just renamed the characters and proceeded as planned. 

I would have loved to have seen the Charlton Heroes versions of Watchmen. DC could easily have done it as an "imaginary" story (we wouldn't get the similar "Elseworlds" concept until 1989), without harming the potential for the characters to continue on from the Charlton continuity ... although to be fair, DC's efforts to continue the series were largely forgettable.

I will look at the remaining Charlton Heroes in some future instalment of this blog, but for now, I think that's enough, don't you? I'll get back to Silver Age Marvels right away.

Next: Marvel Covers 1958

Ditko at Charlton: Part 2

AS STEVE DITKO TOOK ON MORE MARVEL WORK DURING THE EARLY 1960s, and the first run of Captain Atom came to a close, his output for Charlton began to shrink.

Can you do Captain Atom without Steve Ditko on art? My vote would be, No.

Just why Charlton decided to halt the Captain Atom series in Space Adventures at the end of 1961 isn't clear. It may have been that Ditko was losing interest in the character - given the poor Joe Gill scripts, that wouldn't be surprising. And that would fit with the publisher filling out the final issue of the run with two Captain Atom stories drawn by Rocke Mastroserio.

Or maybe it was just poor sales. After all, the only other superheroes around in 1961 were the handful published by DC Comics, a small proportion of their overall output. Perhaps if Charlton had stuck with it, they might have been able to ride the same wave that Stan latched onto when he put out Fantastic Four later in the same year.

Either way, it was around the same time that Ditko began to distance himself from the company that had been his (professional) home for so many years.

WHO THE HECK IS STEVE DITKO?

Stephen John Ditko was born in Johnstown, Pennsylvania on 2 November 1927. An artistically-inclined kid, he graduated from Greater Johnstown High School in 1945, and in the October joined the US Army, was stationed to Occupied Germany and drew cartoons for an Army Newspaper.

When Ditko got out of the Army in 1950, he enrolled in The Cartoonists and Illustrators School under the G.I. Bill and studied under Batman artist Jerry Robinson. Robinson remembered that Ditko "... was in my class for two years, four or five days a week, five hours a night. It was very intense." Robinson would often bring in guest speakers, and one-time Atlas Comics editor Stan Lee addressed the class. "I think that was when Stan first saw Steve's work."

For his part, Steve Ditko acknowledges that he owed much to his tutor. "Until I came under the influence of Jerry Robinson, I was self-taught, and you’d be amazed at the hours, months, and years one can spend practicing bad drawing habits."

Steve Ditko's first drawn professional story was very slick and accomplished, with the instantly recognisable Ditko trademark style very much in evidence.

Ditko's first sale was the story "Stretching Things", scripted by Bruce Hamilton for Stanley Morse's Key Publications in early 1953, but for whatever reason, Morse sold the completed story to Ajax-Farrell, who published it in their Fantastic Fears 5 (Jan 1954).

Though Daring Love - as the title might suggest - veered towards cheesecake, Ditko's art for the title remains relatively demure.

Steve Ditko's second sale was also to Stanley Morse, for his romance title Daring Love 1 (Sep 1953), "Paper Love". The writer remains unknown. Ditko's third sale was to Morse as well, another tale scripted by Bruce Hamilton - "Hair Yee-eeee" in Strange Fantasy 9 (Dec 1953 - though it does appear to have been inked by other hands. 

After another job for Morse - "Range War" in Blazing Western 1 (Jan 1954) - Ditko worked for a short while for Simon and Kirby, at first inking backgrounds, then assisting Mort Meskin. "(1) He knows how to draw good proportions, etc, and can handle any type of story well," said Ditko in a 1964 interview. "(2) His panel compositions are consistently superior to most artists, (3) and most important he is truly a remarkable storyteller. No one who reads a Meskin drawn story is ever in a fog as to what is happening. Not only does Meskin tell a story extremely well, but he does it in the most difficult way. he does not take the easy way out or use impressive eye-catching gimmicks that only confuse the story's continuity."

Simon and Kirby must've been impressed with Steve Ditko's abilities, because he went from assisting Mort Meskin to pencilling and inking his own stories in just a few weeks.

Ditko went on to draw a few few stories - "Hole in His Head" in Black Magic 27 (Nov/Dec 1953), "Buried Alive" in Black Magic 28 (Jan/Feb 1954 and "Madame Cyanide and Mr Trick" in Black Magic 29 (Mar/Apr 1954) - for the Simon and Kirby's Prize Comics.

Ditko's debut job for Charlton was in the oddly-titled horror anthology, The Thing, and was a reinterpretation of the classic fairy tale Cinderella with a vampiric twist. The script writer is unknown.

Then in towards the end of 1953 Ditko did his first job - "Cinderella" in The Thing 12 (Feb 1954), along with the cover - for Charlton, where he would stay for a number of years, though not without the occasional hiccup.

In his first six months at Charlton, Ditko turned out an impressive 155 pages of comic strip and 17 covers - that's an average of nearly 26 pages and almost 3 covers a month, mostly horror and science fiction with a smattering of crime

Throughout most of 1954, Ditko would deliver stories and covers to Charlton at breakneck pace, pencilling and inking the strips, many scripted by longtime EC writer Carl Wessler.

Some time around the middle of 1954, Ditko contracted tuberculosis and was unable to work for a year or so, moving back to his parents' house in Pennsylvania to recuperate. When he was well enough to resume drawing, in late 1955, he had planned to return to Charlton, but the sands had shifted under the company. First, the introduction of the Comic Code Authority stamp of approval had been inaugurated in October 1954 - affecting the March 1955 cover-dated issues - decimating the existing horror titles, where Ditko had been earning most of his income. Then, as mentioned last time, the company's plant had been hit by Hurricane Diane in August 1955 and had suspended operations. There just wasn't any work to be had at Charlton Comics.

A few Charlton freelancers had already jumped ship to Martin Goodman's Atlas Comics, including Ditko's sometime collaborator, scriptwriter Carl Wessler. So it's probably not a coincidence that Ditko followed and his first couple of stories for Atlas were scripted by Wessler.

In his first stint at Atlas/Marvel, it seems that Stan Lee just viewed Ditko as a jobbing artist, no better or worse than any of the others. So Ditko was assigned just a few jobs per month, way below his 26 page monthly capacity at Charlton.

During 1956, Ditko drew just 63 pages for editor Stan Lee and no covers. That's an average of less than eight pages a month, barely enough to keep Ditko in pencils. So as soon as Charlton was back on its feet, Ditko returned to his alma mater and picked up where he left off.

The timing does seem odd. The final pages he would have drawn for Stan Lee would have been in the first half of April 1956. Given the production time and the three months gap between on-sale and cover dates, his first pages during his second stint at Charlton would have been delivered in September 1956, which begs a couple of questions: what was he doing between April and September 1956 and if Stan wasn't giving him enough work, why didn't Ditko just draw pages for both companies at the same time?

My guess would be that Ditko had some kind of falling out with Stan or, more likely, Goodman around April 1956 and withdrew his labour in protest. Charlton wouldn't have been fully on line by that time, so Ditko had to wait a few months before Charlton was buying art again.

Whatever the reasons behind the timing of Ditko's return to Charlton, he jumped  right back in, delivering art for editor Al Fago, himself only a couple of months away from a bust-up with Charlton bosses, on old titles like Strange Suspense Stories and new ones like Out of this World.

Unlike Stan Lee, Charlton Editor Al Fago was happy to give Steve Ditko cover assignments as soon as he started working for the company, and was rewarded with these eye-catching examples - the Out of This World cover is especially strong.

Ditko's output during his first six months at Charlton was a lot higher than during his time at Atlas, but still below his full capacity. From September 1956 to January 1957 (titles cover-dated from February to June 1957) he delivered an average of 28 pages (and a little over 1.5 covers) a month. But during the next six months (ending with the December 1957 cover-dated issues) Ditko output leapt to a dizzying 62 pages a month, plus 16 covers in the same period. Just the December issues alone boasted 84 pages of Ditko and five covers, more than in his entire eight month stint with Atlas. Some of those pages may have been inventory items, but the total number of Ditko pages contained in the 1957 cover-dated Charlton books was 429, 24 of which were covers - an average of almost 36 pages a month.

Another trio of terrific comic covers from Steve Ditko. It's hard to imagine how he could turn out such striking images when he had to work at such a furious rate.

The following year was little different. Ditko delivered a total of 418 pages for the 1958 Charltons, though only five were covers, still an impressive 35 pages a month. Just why Ditko was turning out so much material for Charlton can be traced back to the flood and its impact on Charlton's business.

"Santangelo called a meeting of the artists and myself" writer Joe Gill recalled in an interview for The Comic Book Artist 9 (Summer 2000). "He was an inspired speaker in his broken English, and said he was going to carry on (though, in the meanwhile, the guy had gotten umpteen dollars in flood relief from the government, for free; this was an enormous boost for him), but he couldn't continue to pay us the same 'high rates'. He said that we could all continue working at half of what we had been working before. I was dropped to two dollars a page." The big companies were paying four times that rate.

Dick Giordano was on the Charlton staff at the time. He said the regular rate for art - pencils and inks - was $13 a page. "After the flood, it was halved to $6.50; later it went up to $10; later still back to $13." So that probably explains Ditko's prodigious output.

These would be the last Charlton covers from Steve Ditko in quite a long while, which is a shame because the company allowed him to push the boundaries of what comic covers to could be.

Ditko rattled on into 1959 barely slackening his pace for the January to April cover-dated Charlton comics. Then something odd happened. Ditko started drawing for Marvel, but at a far less furious rate. Where he had been averaging over 43 pages a month for the first four months of the year, he abruptly switched to Marvel where he was delivering just about 15 pages a month. His Charlton output dropped off a cliff.

On his return to Marvel in 1959, Ditko was only assigned two covers during the year and, while good, they don't carry quite the oddness of his cover art for Charlton.

Could it be that even Goodman's miserly page rates were a big improvement over what Charlton was paying its contributors in the months after the flood? It seems likely, and going by the figures above, my guess would be that Ditko could get at least double, if not triple, the page rate at Marvel. Indeed, as 1959 wore on, he began doing odds and ends for Charlton again, probably topping up his workload if Stan left him some free time during the month.

What were Charlton thinking of? I get they had to save money to stay in business, but the last place you cut corners in magazine publishing is on the cover, for Pete's sake ...

Into 1960, and Ditko's work for Charlton continued at an average rate of about 11 pages a month, while he turned in around 13 pages a month for Marvel. Things must have been tight at Charlton, because where they'd previously used many Ditko-drawn covers, during 1960 most Charlton covers were pasted together using panels from inside the comic.

Here's what Steve Ditko's page output for his various clients looked like as the 1960s unfolded and he became disenchanted with Marvel Comics.

Year	Charlton	Marvel	ACG	Warren	Dell	DC	Tower
1961	230	285	0	0	0	0	0
1962	135	424	0	0	0	0	0
1963	257	423	0	0	0	0	0
1964	20	482	0	0	0	0	0
1965	20	410	0	0	0	0	0
1966	153	220	14	28	99.5	9	20
1967	261	0	0	52	0	0	40

Could Steve Ditko have been laying the groundwork during 1965 for his 1966 departure from Marvel? If he had expressed an interest in returning to Charlton, it would have made sense for then editor Pat Masuli to begin reprinting the old Space Adventures Captain Atom tales in Strange Suspense Stories prior to reviving the character in a full-length series. But I couldn't find any evidence to support that.

Steve Ditko - (2 Nov 1927 - 29 Jun 2018)

AND ... HE'S BACK

During 1964, Charlton Publications owner John Santangelo was looking at the inroads Stan Lee was making into the superhero market over at Marvel Comics and though he should have a piece of that pie. Executive editor Pat Masuli was directed to come up with some properties to compete with Fantastic Four and Spider-Man and what we got was Sarge Steel, a revival of Blue Beetle and, in Mysteries of Unexplored Worlds, a Thor knock-off, Son of Vulcan. Oh, and Captain Atom reprints in Strange Suspense Stories 75 (Jun 1965).

Blue Beetle 1 (Jun 1964), Sarge Steel 1 (Dec 1964) and Mysteries of Unexplored Worlds 46 (May 1965). Of these only Sarge Steel, with polished Dick Giordano art, was of much interest.

Quite what Masuli's plan was after he ran out of Ditko Captain Atom stories to reprint has never been clear. With Ditko firmly ensconced at Marvel in 1965 (he would have been plotting and drawing Amazing Spider-Man 25 around that time), Masuli had to compile covers for Strange Suspense Stories from interior panels, suggesting that he either never approached Ditko for new covers or he did and Ditko didn't have the time or the inclination.

In the end, the books weren't a tremendous success, with only Sarge Steel lasting more than five issues. However, circumstances led Charlton to stick with superheroes a little longer. In 1965, Dick Giordano was promoted to Managing Editor and came up with the idea of a line of "Action Heroes" ... costumed but non-powered crimefighters - except Captain Atom, sort of Charlton's flagship character, but Giordano had a plan for him, too. So, whatever Ditko's reasons might have been, he would have started pencilling new Captain Atom stories around the same time he was working on the epic Master Planner three-parter for Marvel's Amazing Spider-Man title, in the July of 1965.

This second run of the character kicked off with Captain Atom 78 (Dec 1965), numbering continuing from from Strange Suspense Stories, and featured full-length, 20-page stories rather than two or three five-pagers and a back-up strip. Ditko also got to produce all-new cover art, though it's not as quirky and interesting as the covers he'd contributed to Charlton's fantasy titles just a few years earlier.

Here, as with the earlier run of stories, Captain Atom's powers seem to be limitless. He can project radiation, pass through solid objects, in fact accomplish anything the plot calls for.

The interior art for "The Gremlins of the Blue Planet" is acceptable, inked as it was by Rocke Mastroserio, but the plot - whether by Steve Ditko or scripter Joe Gill - creaks badly. Borrowing heavily from 1950 sci-fi movies, this adventure centres around aliens who are smart enough to get to Earth but not smart enough to develop new space vehicles, instead relying on a kidnapped Earth scientist. No, I didn't think it made much sense, either.

OK, the good Captain is still inventing new super-powers as he goes along, but this time we have a costumed antagonist ... and super-powered punching.

Captain Atom 79 (Feb 1966) was a bit of a change of pace. Unlike the "Blue Planet" story, which harked back to the style of adventures we saw in the Space Adventures run, this tale looked like it was making an effort to be more like a Marvel-style superhero tale. For a start there's a costumed super-villain, something we'd not seen before in Captain Atom tales. Then there's the fact that CA gets a bit more physical in tackling the baddie, where in previous adventures he'd just zapped them from a distance with one of the superpowers that Gill or Ditko had made up on the spot.

Again, Ditko's pencils are inked by Rocke Mastroserio, which was never going to be as good as Ditko's own inks. Quite why this was necessary, I couldn't say. Looking at Ditko's output for 1966 (see table above), it looks as though Ditko should have had the capacity.

The villain, Doctor Spectro, is a cookie-cutter baddie from Central Casting - an embittered inventor whose work is pooh-poohed by all he tries to sell it to. He's discovered that the different coloured lights that make up the visible spectrum can affect people's moods and emotions. But a run-in with some gangsters results in Spectro stumbling against his light-generating apparatus, and being bathed in intense light. The result is that his mind becomes more embittered and he, too, like Captain Atom, starts acquiring additional powers as the plot progresses, including the ability to absorb energy and project it as weaponised light.

His undoing comes when he absorbs too much energy and turns into a rainbow.

As a runaway planet hurtles towards Earth, Drako (the Merciless) plans to use the captured Captain Atom's powers to force Earth to submit to his rule. Drako's daughter Celest stands in for Princess Aurora, but there's no Dale Arden in sight.

Captain Atom 80 (Apr 1966) lifts a big chunk of its plot from the Flash Gordon serial (1936). A planet is hurtling towards Earth and a frightening rate, but when Captain Atom investigates, he finds the "planet" hollow, housing a migrating civilisation. Atom endeavours to help the hapless aliens by working with their slightly sinister ruler Drako to slow the planet down and avert the destruction of two civilisations. But Drako has ambitions and tricks Captain Atom into supplying the energy to slow the planet down, but at the same time trapping himself in Drako's machinery. Only a terrible sacrifice by Drako's daughter Celest frees Captain Atom, leaving Drako a broken man.

The issue also gives us an action-packed space rescue sequence as an opener and briefly recaps Captain Atom's origin for newcomers before launching into the main story.

Compare panel three on page 13 with panel two on page 17 and spot the (not so) deliberate mistake.

The cover of Captain Atom 81 (Jul 1966) claims that Doctor Spectro is back by popular demand - though I rather doubt that. Four months doesn't seem like a long enough gap for incoming editor Dick Giordano to react to readers' letters (if there were any) and instruct Ditko and Gill to find a way to reconstruct the colourful villain.

But in typical quirky Ditko style, the still-sentient Spectro fails to pull himself together completely and we end up with five miniature Spectros, each a different colour so we can tell them apart. The minor twist is that one of them - the purple one - retains a spark of Spectro's original decency and plans to take control when the five half-pint Spectros are reconstituted into the original.

Unfortunately, Ditko's plotting goes awry when the unnamed colourist colours the good mini-Spectro red on page 17, resulting in endless confusion among the readers.

The issue is rounded out with an entertaining two-pager on Jiu-Jitsu, by Judomaster creator Frank McLaughlin.

What's that you say? Let's give Captain Atom a female sidekick who can double as a love-interest? Great idea ... we'll do it!

Captain Atom 82 (Sep 1966) continued the trend of adding a gallery of super-villains to the title. This issue introduced The Ghost, a freelance seller of secrets who also has the power of teleportation, and also gave the Captain a new ally in his battle against his growing roster of antagonists.

Not Steve Ditko's best costume design, I fear, but adding an Emma Peel style female foil for Captain Atom probably made good sense in the mid-1960s.

Nightshade is, like Captain Atom, a government-sanctioned agent. The two are introduced by Captain Atom's Air Force handler and are assigned to stake out a Washington party where it is suspected The Ghost's agents will be taking delivery of some unspecified government secrets. Witnessing a handover between two of The Ghost's men, Captain Atom takes off after one and Nightshade follows the other out of the party. They're on the point of capturing the agents when The Ghost himself shows up and teleports our heroes into a Dr Strange style dimension, albeit temporarily.

Returning to our reality, Captain Atom and Nightshade follow a clue and track The Ghost to a forgotten basement room in the Pentagon. So confident is the villain that he reveals his plan: to rob Fort Knox. Of course, our heroes thwart The Ghost's scheme and in the ensuing brawl, Captain Atom damages The Ghost's teleportation device, causing him to be teleported to ... who knows where?

This was the first issue of the title scripted by pioneering comics fan David Kaler, who'd gotten the gig via a recommendation from Marvel's Roy Thomas. Unfortunately, Kaler's dialogue was even more stilted than Joe Gill's so reading these last few issues of the title becomes a bit of a slog.

Maybe there were letters coming in to the Charlton offices. Editor Giordano uses a full page house ad to solicit additional comments from the readers.

Rounding out this issue, we get a couple of pages of Judomaster's Jiu Jitsu tips and an interesting house ad that asks readers to send in their views for a new letters column.

For me, a more exciting development than the de-powering of Captain Atom was the introduction of a revamped Blue Beetle - written and drawn by Steve Ditko - as a backup strip.

The next issue, Captain Atom 83 (Nov 1966), brought a major change to the concept of Captain Marvel. Giordano's stated aim was to develop a line of non-super-heroes. He wanted Charlton's crime fighters to be ordinary humans - costumed or otherwise - who fought crime with just athleticism, combat skills and their wits. Clearly, the near-omnipotent Captain Atom didn't fit in with that plan, so Giordano simply had him lose his powers.

The story begins with renegade scientist Prof Koste engineering a heist - his gang, in uniforms similar to the Master Planner gang over in Amazing Spider-Man, steal some unidentified technology from the air base where Captain Adam is stationed. Changing to Captain Atom, he tries to thwart the robbery, but is shot by one of the gang, tearing his protective costume. Fearful that the radiation leaking from his suit will endanger innocent bystanders, Captain Atom leaves to retrieve a replacement. Pretty soon, the airwaves are buzzing about Captain Atom and the radioactive menace he presents.

It's straight out of the Spider-Man playbook, but the idea of Captain Atom being a menace is only half-heartedly followed up.

But when Prof Koste sabotages a nuclear reactor, it's those same radioactive powers that allow Captain Atom to enter the danger zone and avert a nuclear meltdown, but not before passing out from the strain. Seizing his opportunity, Koste summons his gang so he can study the reactor (?) as Captain Atom revives, only to discover that his powers have faded. Gallantly, Captain Atom tries to fight off the gang with good old-fashioned fisticuffs, but is outnumbered and, in the series' first cliffhanger,  overwhelmed.

The issue is finished off with the debut of the Blue Beetle revival by Steve Ditko (more about that next time) and the new letter page, Captain's Column, featuring letters from uber-fan Guy H. Lillian III and Andy Yanchus, who would later become a Marvel colourist.

Things look pretty bad for Captain Atom. First his powers disappear, then his mask is torn off revealing his face to a television audience. Can things get any worse? You bet. Just wait till you see his new costume.

Captain Atom 84 (Jan 1967) concluded the changes Editor Dick Giordano was setting up for the series. Captured and powerless, Prof Koste rips his mask off before a tv camera. Not quite the disaster you might think, as in his Captain Atom identity, his hair is white. And though his powers slowly begin to return, Captain Atom suddenly finds himself in a brawl with Iron Arms, whose super power is - oh, you guessed!

His power dangerously low, Captain Atom outwits Iron Arms by pretending to be defeated, then with the baddies' attention elsewhere he sets off to stop Koste fleeing in a helicopter with his loot. But the helicopter is a decoy and Koste escapes ... and when Captain Atom returns to his airbase, he finds annoying female reporter Abby Ladd gloating over his recent defeats (didn't The Creeper's Jack Ryder also have an annoying female reporter to deal with?)

I suppose there is a scientific rationale for a metallic costume that gets sprayed on to prevent Captain Atom's radioactivity hurting innocent bystanders, but it could easily have looked just like the original uniform.

Captain Atom is given a new liquid metal outfit to replace his old, fragile uniform and so sports a new look - not, in my opinion an improvement. Captain Atom returns to Koste's lair and, after fighting his way through a small army of henchmen, secures a return match with Iron Arms. But it's a tougher fight than imagined and Captain Atom only barely prevails. The story ends with the public still in two minds about Captain Atom and the promise of more mischief from Abby Ladd.

It's all a bit confused and confusing - Captain Atom and Nightshade vs Punch and Jewelee with incognito supervillain The Ghost watching as a not-so-disinterested bystander.

The villains of Captain Atom 85 (Mar 1967), Punch and Jewelee are, to be fair, pretty lame. Former carnival puppeteers, they find a mysterious chest containing equally mysterious weapons - Punch's stinging strings and Jewelee's hypnotic gemstones - and their first criminal caper is to abduct Alec Rois from under the noses of his friends Captain Adam and Eve (Nightshade) Eden. Unknown to all participants, Alec Rois is also the teleporting supervillain The Ghost. In the end, nothing much happens and the episode is one of the least interesting of the later Captain Atom stories, helped not at all by the hokiness of the two villains. But it does set up the return of the Ghost ...

The nub of the story is that a band of alien Amazons want The Ghost as their new leader, whom they call The Faceless One - he's certainly that, though probably not the leader they're looking for.

And return he does, three months later in Captain Atom 86 (Jun 1967). The opening scenes have The Ghost appearing in three different places at the same time, first terrorising bystanders on a busy city afternoon, then giving Nightshade the slip in North Haven, and finally fading away on Captain Atom at the Pentagon. The clue should be that this Ghost doesn't steal anything or attempt to fight the police, nor our heroes. Of course it's not The Ghost, but three of his henchmen, dressed in Ghost costumes and teleported remotely by the real Ghost. It's a nifty idea, but scripter Dave Kaler doesn't follow up on this and the story straight away wanders off in other directions.

In his new lair - a rusty-looking freighter - The Ghost gloats that he's discovered a way to manufacture gold out of thin air, which begs the question, why does he need to be a criminal, then? Nonetheless, he's determined to destroy Captain Atom and Nightshade using the weapons he stole from Punch and Jewellee. Air Force radar operators detect a strange radio signature around the area of Cape Bay, which coincide with The Ghost's teleporting activity. Whether this is a deliberate ploy to lure our heroes into a trap isn't revealed, but The Ghost does trap Captain Atom and Nightshade in a strange energy-draining field. Luckily Nightshade is able to call on her mysterious shadow power (which still hasn't been explained to us readers) to escape the field and turn it off The Ghost's trap at the mains. Just as the fighting kicks off again, all parties are suddenly paralysed, and the weird Amazon women arrive to take The Ghost to their Hidden Land, where he will be inaugurated as their new leader.

Matching the sketchy writing is the equally sketchy art by Ditko and Rocke. It seems like Ditko is only delivering the barest of pencil layouts for Rocke to complete. Especially when you compare it to the finished art Ditko is handing in on the Blue Beetle backup stories in these same issues. (I will look at the Blue Beetle stories next time ... promise.)

A bit of a lacklustre issue - vague plotting, a bland villain and phoned-in art by Ditko/Rocke add up to not very much. Kind of disappointing.

Sad to say, it doesn't get a whole lot better in Captain Atom 87 (Aug 1967). Scripter Dave Kaler gives us another weak villain in The Fiery Icer, who projects heat from his right hand and cold from his left hand. When he applies first heat, then cold, the extreme expansion/contraction causes the affected object to explode. Oddly, the villain's lair is another sea-borne freighter. Maybe he bought it from The Ghost.

Just what The Fiery Icer's criminal plan is isn't too clear. All we get is that Captain Adam's missile base will put a crimp in his plans. It's pretty thin material, with a barely workmanlike art job by Ditko and Mastroserio.

The Nightshade back-up strip - Blue Beetle earned his own title last month - is a welcome addition, with slightly better scripting by Kaler and art from Jim Aparo.

Could this be a return to the glory days of Space Adventures and Strange Suspense Stories? Sadly not. Whatever Captain Atom is doing in outer space, it doesn't add up to very much.

Captain Atom 88 (Oct 1967) might look like a return to the space setting of the early 1960s Space Adventures stories, but it's another muddled effort from Dave Kaler. This time the Ditko pencils are inked by Frank McLaughlin whose inks overwhelm Ditko even more than Rocke's.

When the Air Force intercepts a distress call from a distant planet, Captain Atom is dispatched in an experimental rocketship to investigate. There he battles giant insects and is advised by an artificial intelligence that the people of the planet got bored and left (or died, it's not really clear), but the presence of giant insects has triggered automated distress calls. The AI requests that Captain Atom save the planet, though Kaler doesn't explain why. Thank goodness for the Nightshade bonus story.

At least we get to find out a bit more about the strange golden women who have kidnapped The Ghost and installed him as their figurehead ruler.

The final issue of the run, Captain Atom 89 (Dec 1967), sees the return of The Ghost and his golden Amazon women, and it's an improvement over the last two episodes. In the secret realm of the Amazon women, Alec Rois is finding that absolute power isn't all it's cracked up to be. He longs to return to the outside world where he can be evil. The Amazons aren't wild about that, until they discover that the US Air Force has discovered an advanced missile of alien origin which would allow the Amazon to rule the world, if they could just get their manicured hands on it. Reluctantly, they allow The Ghost to undertake Operation Swipe a Missile.

But as Rois begins his caper, he receives what looks like a crystal ball in the mail, and through that, a stern warning to leave the missile alone from a character calling himself 13. It appears that 13 has claimed the missile for himself, and thwarts The Ghost's attempts to steal it at every turn ... and Captain Atom's attempts to save it, if he gets in the way.

After a lot of thwart and counter-thwart, it's revealed that 13 is an agent from the future, working with the US government to remove the dangerous missile from our time era.

The story ends with a blurb for next issue, an adventure titled "Showdown in Sunuria", but the next issue of Captain Atom never showed up on the news stands ... and that was that. Or was it?

All things considered, this "final" Captain Atom adventure is a couple of notches above the rather disappointing Kaler scripted stories we were served in the last three or four issues of Captain Atom's colour comic.

Years later, in 1975, Charlton launched a pro-zine, in the style of Amazing World of DC and Marvel's FOOM, called Charlton Bullseye and in the first two issues (Dec 1974 and May 1975), we got the serialised version of ... "Showdown in Sunuria." With pencils by Steve Ditko.

Those pencils must have been lying around in a drawer in the Charlton offices since before the Captain Atom title was cancelled, likely around September 1967. Looking at the timings, it may well have been the cancellation of Captain Atom and Blue Beetle that triggered Ditko's move to DC, but I've not been able to corroborate that.

By the time Charlton published Bullseye, Roger Stern and John Byrne were on the Charlton staff and likely hatched a plan to finish up the work on Ditko's pencils and publish the final real Captain Atom story in black and white. And because of that, the finished episode is quite a bit better than what we'd been seeing from the Kaler/Ditko/McLaughlin team, and brings to a close the mystery of The Ghost and the Amazon women who hail him as their leader, The Faceless One.

The Ghost teleports Captain Atom and Nightshade to the Amazon realm Sunuria where he plans to finish them off. But directly before that Nightshade is injured in a battle with a giant robot, and the Amazon code demands The Faceless One tends her injuries, leaving Captain Atom to battle the Amazons by himself. Ultimately, just when it looks like Captain Atom's been defeated by The Ghost, a gloating Alec Rois reveals his face to his foe ... which also tips the Amazons off that he's not the real "Faceless One". From there, it's all downhill, with The Ghost buried under the ruins of Sunuria, The Amazon Priestess who helped treat Nightshade pulling a lever to complete the destruction and Captain Atom and Nightshade teleported back to our reality.

The inking second half of the story looks a little rushed by Byrne, and his lettering is too big and too rough, but it's satisfying to see the final chapter of at least The Ghost's story arc.

Captain Atom by Jim Starlin and Allen Milgrom, from Charlton Bullseye 2.

Overall, the first half of the mid-Sixties Captain Atom run was a lot more satisfying than the second half. It probably didn't help that Steve Ditko was caught up in professional turmoil as his perceived relationship with Stan Lee was deteriorating and he was casting around for a suitable escape route. My feeling is that Charlton turned out to be not that route, as Ditko was having to work with lesser talents that weren't showcasing his work in its best light.

A move to DC in late 1967 looked promising, but after completing five issues of Beware The Creeper and two of The Hawk and the Dove, Ditko took another break from comics. Some sources have stated the reasons for this are "unclear", but on the letters page of Beware the Creeper 5 (Feb-Mar 1969), editor Dick Giordano mentions that "Steve has been ailing of late", so it's likely that this was another onset of the tuberculosis that had plagued him ten years earlier.

Next time, I'll look over the other Ditko heroes published by Charlton in the second half of the 1960s - The Blue Beetle and The Question - and squeeze in a few words about some of the other Charlton heroes of the period.

Next: More Charlton Heroes