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