Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko were the artistic poles of early Marvel comics, and between them they carried quite a charge, one grounded by Stan Lee.
Their differences were distinct even before the superheroes arrived in 1961.
Where Kirby’s menaces tended to be brawny and Brobdingnagian, Ditko’s were shadowy and sly, elongated and angular. Kirby’s creatures boasted and charged, Ditko’s leered, lurked, and creeped. Artistic style is a window to personality, and these men had sharply defined styles.
The withdrawn and secretive aspects of Ditko’s nature can probably be read in his artistic style. Often, those who overcome the menaces in his stories are hidden and/or misunderstood people or entities. The heroes get no thanks, and their self-appointed mission is always a lonely one.
Another Ditko thematic focus was dimensionality, which provided opportunities for those outré visual elements that Ditko enjoyed drawing.
Mysterious characters like Dr. Strange and Shade the Changing Man were primarily inter-dimensional in scope, and the theme kept reappearing even in the five-page backup stories Ditko drew for Marvel.
For example, consider I come from the Shadow World! (Tales of Suspense 7, Jan. 1960). The story is told in the first person by a gloating, shadowy invader whose powers derive from his nature as a two-dimensional being.
This tale, which didn’t make it onto the cover of that issue, was memorable enough to be featured in the first Strange Tales Annual published in 1962.
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