The Steve Ditko Omnibus Volume 1 featuring Shade the Changing Man: all stories plotted and illustrated by Steve Ditko with additional writing by a cast of thousands (Collected 2010); The Steve Ditko Omnibus Volume 2 featuring Hawk and Dove: all stories plotted and illustrated by Steve Ditko with additional writing by a cast of thousands (Collected 2010):
Writer-artist Steve Ditko's quixotic nature was only amplified by the cruddy state of mainstream comic books for the people who actually created characters for the companies. His two most notable co-creations for Marvel Comics were Spider-man and Dr. Strange, though he also did character-defining work on Iron Man and the Hulk. Tired of Stan Lee's scripting and editing choices, Ditko left Marvel for more than a decade in the late 1960's. For the last 15 years, he's pretty much done his own, self-published thing, with very occasional short work for DC. He's famously reclusive.
Prior to his fame-creating Marvel superhero work, Ditko did thousands of pages of horror and monster work for many companies, honing his skills until he'd pretty much reached his impressive peak in the 1960's at Marvel and on B&W horror stories for Warren, and superhero work for DC and Charlton in the late 1960's.
These two omnibuses collect all of Ditko's output for DC other than his work on The Creeper in the 1960's and 1970's. In total, the collection spans several decades, offering the great, the good, and the very occasional indifferent sides of Ditko. He plotted many of the stories here (though not all), wrote a few, and either fully illustrated or pencilled the rest. It's a really great, broad look at one of the most important, influential, and fascinating American comic-book creators.
Ditko's unique ability to depict ordinary looking people in fantastical environments was at its best in Dr. Strange, but the Shade stories reprinted here are a very, very close second. They're utterly bizarre and engaging, and Ditko finds in dialogue-writer Michael Fleisher a kindred spirit when it comes to odd dialogue and description. Many of the pieces fully scripted by others take advantage of Ditko's strengths as well.
The pieces penciled but not inked by Ditko offer a fascinating look at how different artists approached Ditko's art. Romeo Tanghal, an excellent inker of George Perez on New Teen Titans in the 1980's, does a really solid job on the Starman adventures reprinted herein. The masterful Wally Wood doesn't always completely work on the four issues of Stalker he and Ditko did together, sometimes overpowering Ditko's distinctive faces, but it's still worth looking at.
There are a few duds in the inking department, but they're few and far between. And while Ditko's Legion of Super-heroes stories aren't an artistic high-point for him, they do accomplish something that a lot of artists on LSH failed at: they make the characters look like teen-agers.
The peaks collected here are really high, and the valleys (mostly horror shorts) still offer some of that Ditko magic. One also gets the only time Ditko drew Batman in a comic-book story (albeit as a guest-star in the first issue of the short-lived Manbat series), and Ditko's crouching, weirdly endearing take on Jack Kirby's Demon. Highly recommended.
Legion: Secret Origin: written by Paul Levitz; illustrated by Chris Batista and Marc Deering (2011-2012): This expanded origin story for the 'New 52' Legion of Super-heroes features the scripting of long-time (as in, on and off again since the early 1980's) LSH writer Paul Levitz and the appropriately clean, crisp artwork of Chris Batista and Marc Deering. The Legion, super-powered humans and aliens from worlds throughout the Milky Way galaxy in the 31st century, are back once again. There may be problems in the 31st century, but the Legion has always worked best against the backdrop of an at-least-partially utopian future Earth beset by problems from without and within, and not, as in the dismal late 1980's '5 Years Later' LSH universe, a ruined world being fixed by an almost equally broken Legion.
Levitz sticks with the decades-old framework of the Legion's origin (the three teenaged founding members save multi-zillionaire R.J. Brande from an assassination attempt; their efforts cause him to suggest they form a superhero team with his financial backing). Additional complexities, political intrigues, and schemes are added. The heroes learn to work together and show their worth to the United Federation of Planets. Both Brande and the young heroes plan to recruit Superboy from the past, though this doesn't happen in the origin. An ancient (in more ways than one) Legion enemy makes its first appearance (again).
I'm not sure how this introduction would play with someone who's never read a Legion adventure before. I thought it was a solid version of the origin, comprehensive without being overburdened with continuity. The Legion has almost always seemed to suffer most after a DC reboot or partial reboot (1985's Crisis on Infinite Earths and 1994's Zero Hour were especially destructive to Legion continuity and, ultimately, popularity), so it's nice to see that they've emerged from September 2011's Flashpoint reboot as perhaps the least affected DC book. And they get to keep Superboy as a member. Recommended.
