Pullin' Up Stakes

This will be the last post I'll be making here on this version of the Dork Forty. The blog will continue, but it will continue elsewhere. I've been having continuing log-in issues with Blogger, and since I've been wanting to expand the blog's focus anyway, I figured it was just time to move on.

So I hope that you'll join us at our new location, http://dorkforty.com/

Things are still a bit... under construction over there as of this writing, but we're whipping it into shape fast. The new version of the nerd farm will feature bigger fields devoted to stuff about movies, books, television, and music in addition to the funnybook coverage you're used to over here. It's the same skewed viewpoint, just applied to more stuff.

Thank you for reading.

Metropolis Mysteries and Eye-Popping Body Horror: FUNNYBOOKSINREVEWAREGO!!

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Happy Birthday, Steve Ditko!

That's right! It's Steve Ditko's birthday, and I can't think of a better way to celebrate the birth of Spider-Man's co-creator than with a big ol' gallery of his artwork. But, much as I love his Spider-Man, and much as I'll always be blown away by the surrealist landscapes he created on Dr. Strange...



click to embiggen ... then trip your ass off!

...I honestly don't think those books represent his best work.

click to embiggen

Okay, maybe Dr. Strange. Anything that could inspire such 70s blacklight poster insanity as seen above simply HAS to be among anyone's best work. Just because.

But his early work on 1950s horror comics was often more detailed and imaginative. And in his work for smaller publishers like Charlton, Ditko felt the freedom to experiment more wildly, and the results were often quite stunning. So it's that work I want to salute tonight: the early, the weird, the obscure Ditko. I'll try to keep my comments to a minimum for once, and just let the art speak for itself. Let's start at the beginning, with a few samples of the great man's earliest, pre-Code artwork...