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

Ditko at Charlton: Part 1

ALTHOUGH STEVE DITKO'S BEST-KNOWN SUPERHERO IS SPIDER-MAN, he had drawn another super character several years earlier ... at Charlton Comics.

Captain Adam became Captain Atom at the beginning of 1960. But it wasn't Charlton Comics' first foray into the superhero field.

Captain Atom was created by artist Steve Ditko and scripter Joe Gill, probably towards the end of 1959, and first appeared in the Charlton anthology comic Space Adventures 33 (Mar 1960).

WHO THE HECK ARE CHARLTON COMICS?

In many ways Charlton Comics were similar to Marvel Comics. Both were privately held companies, both were considered among the bottom feeders of the publishing industry paying the lowest rates to their contributors, both had owners with slightly shady pasts (though the same could be said for DC Comics), both handled their own distribution ... they even shared the same ad space agency. Then, going one further than Marvel, Charlton even had their own printing presses.

Charlton had been founded by John Santangelo, an Italian immigrant bricklayer by trade, and lawyer Ed Levy. Santangelo had started publishing song lyric sheets in 1931 at 10c a go, undercutting other publishers of such material who were changing 35c, but he hadn't bothered to seek permission of the copyright holders. The law caught up with him in 1934 and he was sentenced to 12 months in jail. While in prison, he met Levy and the pair decided to partner up and continue publishing lyric sheets on the outside, this time legitimately, starting in 1935. They called the new company T.W.O. Charles as they both had sons of that name. Santangelo moved a printing business he already owned from Waterbury, Connecticut to Derby, his wife's hometown and this formed the basis of what would become Charlton Publishing.

Charlton's earliest publications were music fan mags that included the lyrics to popular songs, printed legally after Santangelo made a deal with the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP). Hit Parader lasted well into the 1980s.

By 1941, the company was publishing two song lyric sheets, Big Song Magazine and Radio Song Hits, under the imprint of Charlton Press. The following year, it launched an actual music fan magazine, Hit Parader, which still included the lyrics of popular songs, and changed its name to Charlton Publications. The magazine was soon selling 600,000 a month and the company added a companion mag, Song Hits, when they bought rival publisher Song Lyrics Inc.

One of Charlton's massive four-colour printing presses in the 129 acre Derby, Connecticut plant. The company would eventually have seven of these on-site.

Because these big four-colour printing presses were only stopped twice a year for cleaning, Charlton had to find ways of keeping the machines running and in 1944 it branched out into comic publishing. Yellowjacket Comics (Sep 1944), a superhero title, launched under the shell company imprint of "Frank Comunale Publications", presumably to prevent any creditors coming after the main company if the comic failed. The following year saw the debut of Zoo Funnies (Nov 1945) and in 1946, Charlton added Catholic Comics (Oct 1946) to the lineup.

No hidden gold here. Most of the creators of these comics are either unrecorded or long-forgotten, though there is a Sid Greene (later a key inker in DC's Silver Age) story in the first issue of Catholic Comics.

As the comics line grew, Charlton turned to comics packager Al Fago (brother of Marvel editor Vince) to supply material. By 1951, Fago had become in-house editor of the Charlton line and set about building a bullpen, both freelance and in-house, including such notables as Dick Giordano, Vince Alascia, Jon D'Agostino, Sam Glanzman, Rocco "Rocke" Mastroserio, Dick Ayers, Sal Trapani and, of course, Steve Ditko.

Inside the Charlton bullpen, some time in the mid-1960s I'd guess ... looks like there's some proofreading and art bodging going on here.

With the increased capacity, Charlton began to add titles in every gentre. Initially, crime romance and space were the main focus, but soon other types of comics followed, including the slightly odd range of hod rod comics.

In 1951, Charlton added two crime titles, Crime and Justice and Lawbreakers, probably because the the success of Lev Gleason's Crime Does Not Pay. But horror also made the cut, as well as ... hot rods.

In 1953, with Fawcett Comics beaten down by DC's ongoing lawsuits against Captain Marvel, Charlton bought out the Fawcett inventory and added a roster of titles, including:

This Magazine is Haunted Strange Suspense Stories Nyoka Gabby Hayes Western Lash LaRue Western Monte Hale Western Rocky Lane Western

Six-Gun Heroes Tex Ritter Western Tom Mix Western Western Hero. Sweethearts Romantic Secrets Romantic Story

Space was quite popular as a genre during the early 1950s, and so was the western ... so why not give Space Westerns a go?

In 1955, with the introduction of the Comics Code, some other smaller publishers threw in the towel and Charlton acquired material and titles from St John, Superior Comics and Simon and Kirby's Mainline Comics. They also published a superhero title, The Blue Beetle, largely reprinting material from the original Fox Comics title of the 1940s.

During 1955, Charlton published the final inventory issues of Simon & Kirby's failed Mainline Comics. None of the titles outlasted the supply of S&K material that came with them.

Around the same time, Al Fago left Charlton and the editorship passed to his assistant Pat Masulli who would guide Charlton for the next decade. Coincidently, also in 1955, the company was devastated by the flooding of their Derby, Connecticut site. The 18-foot flood waters destroyed much of the Fawcett artwork they'd just acquired, along with printing plates and presses, and over a quarter of a million dollars worth of paper stocks. To make matters worse, Charlton had to bear the losses themselves, as it was impossible to get flood insurance at the time in Connecticut.

Other fan favourite comics from the period include the giant 68 page horror titles Mysteries of Unexplored Worlds and Out of This World, along with Tales of the Mysterious Traveller, Konga and Gorgo ... all of which heavily feature Ditko art.

From the mid-1950s until the end of the decade, Steve Ditko became Charlton's mainstay artist, contributing dozens of covers and snappy short stories, not a million miles away from what he was doing with Stan Lee over at Marvel pretty much around the same time.

One interesting aside about Charlton was that they provided publishing services for Harvey Kurtzman's third foray into satire magazines, Humbug. After splitting wth EC around the time Mad became a magazine, Kurtzman and Elder struck a deal with Playboy publisher High Hefner to put out a big budget, all-colour newstand humour magazine Trump. It only lasted two glorious issues. Then in 1957, Kurtzman took another stab at the genre with Humbug, a comic book-size magazine that frequently got lost on the newsstands. The money had been put up by Kurtzman and Elder, with substantial contributions from contributors Arnold Roth, Al Jaffee and Harry Chester. Production, printing and distribution was handled anonymously by Charlton Publications. Humbug lasted 11 issues.

Unlike its predecessors Mad and Trump, Humbug was a little more political in its stance, and included prose pieces in among the comic strips.

Then, towards the end of the 1950s Steve Ditko and Joe Gill worked up a new superhero character, Captain Atom, that debuted in Space Adventures 33 (Mar 1960). The character seemed popular, because the series would run in the title for the next year and a half until Space Adventures 42 (Oct 1961), when Steve Ditko began to cut back on his work for Charlton in favour of Stan Lee's Marvel Comics.

In 1965, editor Masulli stepped aside in favour of long-time Charlton artist Dick Giordano. Giordano was looking to revive the superhero line and persuaded Ditko to moonlight on the character even as his relationship with Stan Lee and Marvel comics was in decline. As well as drawing Captain Atom once again, Ditko would contribute art to The Blue Beetle, Nightshade and The Question. Other Charlton superheroes of the period included Sarge Steel, Judomaster, Thunderbolt, and Peacemaker.

Although I never even came across any copies of Thunderbolt or Peacemaker at the time, I enjoyed Judomaster, and still have a soft spot for the character today.

By the end of 1967, though, the Charlton superhero line had fizzled out and Giordano left for DC comics, taking many of the artists he'd nurtured with him, including Ditko and Jim Aparo, and writer Denny O'Neil. After Giordano's departure, Charlton shifted its focus to licensed properties like Hannah-Barbera, King Features and Jay Ward cartoons, while continuing its war, horror and romance titles.

Co-founder Ed Levy retired in 1965 and sold his half of the business to John Santangelo. Santangelo died in 1979, and his sons ran the company for a few more years, then sold the superhero characters to DC Comics.

AND ... BACK TO CAPTAIN ATOM

Charlton comics were among the first to follow DC back into the superhero business, helping to kick off the Silver Age. Though only just pipped at the post by Archie Comics, who launched Simon & Kirby's Double Life of Private Strong in June 1959 followed very closely by The Fly in July 1959, Charlton were a close third, publishing their superhero effort Captain Atom in Space Adventures 33 (Mar 1960).

Though The Shield was the revival of a Golden Age Archie character, DC objected the similarities with Superman and forced Archie to cancel the book. The Fly did a little better, lasting 39 issues, though S&K departed after issue 4.

It's an odd serendipity that Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko were the first artists to draw non-DC superheroes after the successful launch of the revived Flash in Showcase 4 (Sep 1956), long before Stan Lee assigned them Fantastic Four and Amazing Spider-Man at Marvel Comics.

It doesn't look like Charlton had high hopes for their new superhero, as they didn't even spring for new cover art, instead lifting a panel from Ditko's interior art and repurposing that.

The first Captain Atom strip ran a luxurious nine pages, giving artist Steve Ditko plenty of space to flesh out the story. His depictions of grief when the Air Force personnel think one of their own has perished are especially effective, and I don't think you'll find such a fine expression of emotion in any other comic book of the period.

Though Captain Atom is wearing his familiar gold and red uniform on the debut issue's cover, the interior art depicts him in a blue uniform. Ditko's use of the nuclear symbols to depict Atom's power is pretty cool and very much in keeping with the Cold War themes that would emerge later in the run.

The remainder of the story details Captain Adams' transformation into the superbeing Captain Atom, his instant acceptance by the US president as a secret weapon (though the secrecy aspects would be slowly eroded over the early part of the character's series), and an exhibition of his seemingly limitless powers.

The atomic symbolism crops up again, as Captain Adam reconstitutes his physical form back on Earth. That feat of teleportation wouldn't be repeated, as his preferred mode of transport going forward would be flying at Mach 3 speeds, leaving a trail of nuclear fairy dust.

The president and Sgt Gunner Gosun are recurring background characters, but neither is given much to do beyond their contributions to moving the plot forward. Interestingly, Captain Atom's first actual adventure would occupy just the final page of the story. This would be a shortcoming of all the Space Adventures episodes ... limited space resulting in too-short tales with unsatisfying conclusions.

Captain still didn't rate new cover artwork, or indeed the lion's share of the cover. But note the use of red, white a blue on the Captain Atom logo, some years before another Captain would use the same idea.

Most of the Captain Atom run in Space Adventures would focus on, well, space adventures, with the Captain's attention fully on battling alien invaders. The second outing in Space Adventures 34 (Jun 1960) had him rescuing a Russian astronaut when his communist masters rush him into space with no clear way to bring him back. Only the intervention of Captain Atom saves the Russian's life and causes the cosmonaut to realise the inhumanity of his Soviet masters.

In this short tale, Captain Atom shows empathy with and mercy towards an "enemy", caring more for the Soviet cosmonaut's life than the pilot's own people do. Teaching kids such basic human decency doesn't seem like a priority any more.

This is especially fascinating because, just less than a year later, in April 1961, the Soviets were the first to launch a man into space. Yuri Gargarin orbited the Earth once in the spacecraft Vostok 1 and caused some denting of American pride.

Just the one six-page Captain Atom story in Space Adventures 35. Despite appearances, "Spies from Another World" isn't a Captain Atom tale, but a short fantasy story that wouldn't be out of place in a Marvel comic of the same period.

The Captain Atom tale in Space Adventures 35 (Aug 1960) was an altogether more whimsical affair. Billy, the son of Sgt Gosun, has been sleeping for unusually long periods, then describing vivid dreams when he awakens. 

"The Little Wanderer" is a slight and ultimately unsatisfying story about a child whose dreams about intelligent monster birds in space turn out to be real.

Suspecting there's something more than a child's imagination, Captain Adam investigates as Captain Atom and discovers that Billy is traversing the universe with a benign space bird creature called Loga. There really isn't any conflict to resolve. Captain Atom just states that Loga will return Billy to his parents now and that's the end of the story.

I think this is the first time Steve Ditko shows both identities of a superhero in the one image, something he'd do repeatedly a few years later during his run on Spider-Man at Marvel.

Space Adventures 36 (Oct 1960) had two Captain Atom stories, both five pages, both once more a little thin on the ground. "The Wreck of X-44" had Captain Adam, now identified as a test pilot, blown out of the sky when a saboteur's bomb detonates the experimental X-44 space rocket miles above the Earth. The saboteur is identified, Captain Atom gives chase and captures the spy. That's it.

Other than lacking mystery or suspense, the first story in Space Adventures 36 is very good. The Ditko artwork helps a lot.

The second story has no more substance than the first. When the Soviets launch missiles at an orbiting American weapons platform, Captain Atom destroys the Russian warheads.

There's a lot of wanton destruction of Russian hardware and the American weapons platform survives, but it's never mentioned again and neither the characters nor the narrative captions stop to consider whether an orbiting death star might be a tad provocative.

No effort is spent debating the ethics of the US weaponising space, or whether the Russians might have had a point, which is a bit out of character for Captain Atom, given his efforts to save the life of a Soviet cosmonaut in Space Adventures 34.

The cover art for Space Adventures 37 is a composite of two interior Ditko panels (see below page scans). The first story in this issue, "The Space Prowlers", doesn't rate a cover mention.

Space Adventures 37 (Dec 1960) also sported two Captain Atom stories, each of five pages. "The Space Prowlers" starts off with Captain Adam discovering a spy filching documents from an Air Force base, but soon escalates into panoramas of destruction as his super alter ego wipes out an entire alien battle fleet by detonating his own body in a nuclear explosion.

"The Space Prowlers" packs a lot of spectacular action into its brief five pages. When Captain Atom discovers an alien invasion fleet hovering above Earth, he directs his nuclear powers at it, destroying every last vessel ... which does seem a little extreme.

"A Victory for Venus" is an altogether more eccentric affair, with Captain Atom discovering space mermaids in the vicinity of Venus, destroying any Earth rockets that come close. When Venutians destroy a Terran space camera, Captain Atom meets some comely space sirens who warn him off, then despatch him back to Earth with the odd statement that they will meet again as friends. 

It seems as though this story was setting up some larger future conflict between Venus and Earth, but the series was cancelled before we ever got to see the space mermaids again.

I don't believe the dangling plotline was ever resolved - though there is another lady from Venus in Space Adventures 42 (Oct 1961), who appears to be unrelated to this bunch.

Details of the stories in this issue will have to remain a mystery until I can add a copy of Space Adventures 38 to my burgeoning collection.

I can't tell you very much about Space Adventures 38 (Feb 1961), as I don't have a copy and the stories weren't reprinted in the later Strange Suspense Stories run. However, the issue featured three five-page tales ... "1 Second of War", "Backfire" and "The Force Beyond", all by Joe Gill and Steve Ditko. I'll add further detail here when I eventually track down a copy of the comic.

This cover has a bit of a rushed feel to it, even by Charlton standards. "See Captain Atom", it blares but prefers to keep the details quiet. Or maybe the rest of the cover line fell off on the way to the print room. There's certainly a gap for it.

Space Adventures 39 (Apr 1961) had two five-page stories by Steve Ditko and a seven-pager by Rocco "Rocke" Mastroserio, "Peace Envoy".

It's not a splashy story, just Captain Atom on a short rescue mission. The dialogue at the end of page 5 suggests that Captain Atom's existence is still supposed to be a secret.

The first Ditko story, "Test Pilot's Nightmare", has Captain Adam trying to warn a stubborn scientist about a failing oxygen valve on a stratospheric plane. His warnings are ignored and it's up to Captain Atom to save the endangered test pilot.

"An Ageless Weapon" is even more low-key, and more of a Captain Adam story than Captain Atom. Though he shows the spies his powers, they never see him in costume, so the secrecy is preserved.

The second Ditko story gives us Captain Adam as a courier of secret documents being captured by East German spies. Adam quickly turns the tables on the spies, captures them and delivers them to NATO headquarters. This short piece is unusual because we don't get to see any Captain Atom action. In fact, Captain Adam's super alter-ego doesn't even appear until the final panel.

Though the cover lines are every bit as sparse as last issue's, at least it doesn't look like the text has fallen off. GCD speculates that the headshot may be Rocke Mastroserio's work, but I don't think it looks anything like his style.

The next issue of Space Adventures, 40 (Jun 1961), gave us a seven-page Captain Atom story, featuring more anti-communist rhetoric and a shorter more whimsical tale in which the Captain cures a young lad's cancer.

I've left out the more mundane exposition pages and focussed here on the action-packed scenes of Captain Atom melting hundreds of Russian missiles. You're welcome.

In the first tale, "The Crisis", Captain Adam first impersonates an elderly diplomat, Mr Haynes, who is scheduled to make an important speech at a conference in Europe. Enemy agents kidnap the fake Mr Haynes and try to coerce him into altering his speech. But the disguised Captain Adam doesn't fear their guns and tells the assembled representatives of the Soviet shenanigans. Of course they shoot him - to little effect - and are quickly arrested. And Mr Haynes is free to give his speech. But an undercover US operative within the Soviet delegation informs Captain Atom of an imminent plot to launch a nuclear strike on the US while the conference is under way. Captain Atom streaks off to destroy the Soviet arsenal in spectacular style and all-out war is averted once again. It's a lot of plot packed into seven pages.

This is the first we hear of Captain Atom using the rays of this particular star to cure his own radiation poisoning ... and the first time we've heard that he even had any ill-effects from his own exposure to nuclear energy.

The second story tells of a normally-reliable Air Force technician who keeps making silly blunders. Captain Adam feels there is more to the story than just carelessness and finds out that the technician's son is seriously ill. As Captain Atom he takes the child on a journey to a mysterious star, whose rays can counteract the gamma poisoning that has made the lad ill.

It's the final appearance of Captain Atom in his original Space Adventures run. Quite why Charlton discontinued the character is unknown. Possible Ditko's increasing workload at Marvel Comics might have been the cause.

Space Adventures 41 (Aug 1961) doesn't have any Captain Atom stories, but he returns in Space Adventures 42 (Oct 1961), in two stories from Rocke Mastroserio and the final adventure of the period from Steve Ditko, "The Silver Lady from Venus".

"The Silver Lady from Venus" is an odd little tale to conclude Ditko's first run on Captain Atom. No reason is given for not returning the Venutian Siren to her home planet, and just dumping her behind the Iron Curtain doesn't seem like an effective solution.

The title character has been broadcasting a television show that seems to have top research scientists mesmerised, enticing them to cause missile launches to fail in a most disastrous manner. Captain Atom investigates and discovers that the Silver Lady is indeed from Venus, but has no relationship to the Venutian sirens we encountered back in Space Adventures 37.

And with that, Captain Atom was gone. Charlton may have been considering carrying on with Rocke Mastroserio as a replacement for Ditko, as they'd published several instalments drawn by him in Space Adventures 39 and 42. But Ditko had been contributing a number of stories to Stan Lee's post Atlas Marvel line, beginning in 1958 and with the addition of two extra fantasy titles - Tales of Suspense and Tales to Astonish, Ditko's Marvel work was expanding at the same time as his Charlton work was shrinking.

By the time Ditko finished his run on Captain Atom in mid-1961, his only two remaining Charlton titles were Konga and Gorgo, both of which he drew until the end of 1963, which was around the same time that Amazing Spider-Man went monthly.

Maybe it was only DC that insisted on exclusivity during the 1960s, as Ditko continued to draw these Charlton titles while he was working for Marvel and even while drawing Spider-Man and Dr Strange.

The Space Adventures run was interesting mostly for the mixture of slick and quirky that Steve Ditko brought to the art. Though not as polished as his later Spider-Man work, there's still a great deal to admire in Ditko's drawing. Unfortunately, the stories are let down by Joe Gill's slapdash scripts, which fail to make the most of Ditko's tight plotting. Gill had done much better work in previous years at Atlas, notably on Kid Colt Outlaw, but here it often seemed to me that he was inserting text into panels even when he had nothing to say ... and from the result, you'd think Gill had Van Gogh's ear for dialogue, especially if you compare it to what Stan Lee was doing over at Marvel during the same period.

Later, as Steve Ditko became dissatisfied at Marvel, he would return to Charlton and the character he helped create at the beginning of the decade. But that's a story for another time.

Next: More of Captain Atom and his pals