Ditko co-created the character behind Spider-Man: Brand New Day, designing the costume, the villains and, crucially, the way the character moves: crouched, contorted, spider like rather than heroic. That physical language, invented on the page in the nineteen sixties, is still what every screen adaptation works from.
He was an American comics artist who worked across horror, science fiction and superhero material, and he developed an increasingly personal style influenced by an individualist philosophy he held seriously. He left the character at the height of its success and spent the rest of his career refusing interviews, publicity and photographs.
Recurring subjects: moral absolutism, protagonists who are physically unimpressive and psychologically strained, and layouts that fracture under pressure. His figures are wiry and awkward rather than idealised, and his page design used distortion and surreal geometry decades before it became common.
Two of the most valuable characters in comics originate substantially with him, and his visual design for both remains essentially unchanged. His refusal of public life for fifty years, while his creations became a global industry, is one of the more remarkable positions any artist has taken.
For readers who want to see where the visual language actually comes from. Suited to anyone approaching the films who has never read the original runs, and to those interested in his stranger, more philosophical later work.
