“’Twas Steve’s Idea”: Steve Ditko and the Problem of Collaborative Production

Abstract

Steve Ditko almost never participated in interviews, and in 1968 he took part in his very last, in issue 4 of the fanzineMarvel Main. Responding to a question about which of his characters he believed were the clearest extension of his own philosophy, Ditko remarked, “Every person, whether he wants to be or not, is in a continuous struggle. It’s not a physical life or death struggle. . . . It’s a struggle for his mind!” For Ditko, this struggle meant to protect one’s mind from being corrupted by “irrational premises.” It’s that personal struggle for the individual mind that underwrites Ditko’s philosophy as he explored it over the course of his career, from its beginnings in 1953, working in a variety of genres, to his