Spider-man Shrugged

[bcholmes]

I somehow stumbled on some articles about Steve Ditko (the original artist for Spider-man, Dr. Strange, Shade, the Changing Man, and The Question.

I did not know, until now, that Ditko was an Objectivist (a philosophy that I consider to be pretty much morally bankrupt). Not just an Objectivist, but really Objectivist.

According to some sources, he quit Marvel because:

Stan Lee had wanted a villain called "The Green Goblin" to have an alter ego of a prominent businessman, and Ditko objected both to the heavy-handed ultimatum requiring this development and the notion that a career criminal might prosper in commerce among free men. He saw criminals as, essentially, bums who turned to criminal methods out of lack of the necessary grit to succeed at honorable callings. Lee persisted, Ditko quit Marvel Comics

I have never read (or even seen copies of) Ditko's Mr. A, which is apparently the most political of his work, but I was interested in the suggestion that Rorschach (of The Watchmen) was basically a fusion and satire of The Question and Mr. A. What's especially weird is that, I guess, Ditko really kinda believed the stuff that Rorschach believed (although the misogyny is probably an invention).

Here's an amusing quotation I found:

[An essay in The Comics Journal] relates the great story about how Kirby wanted the Him/Warlock story of Fantastic Four #66-67 to be a critique of objectivism, but Lee gutted it, which led to their falling out. Very interesting. "When I peel off the mask of the supervillain, all I see is the face of Ayn Rand, the philosopher-bitch who managed to outdo Yoko Ono and blast apart two of the 1960's most creative partnerships."

Comments

[farklebarkle.livejournal.com]

that's really interesting. great post--thanks.

[erik]

Rorschach wasn't originally intended to be a fusion of The Question and anything at all.
The Watchmen was conceived as a treatment of the Charlton Comics characters, which DC had just acquired from that company's receivers for next to nothing. I don't remember all of them, but Rorschach=Question, Owl=Blue Beetle.
DC balked at killing off all this intellectual property they'd just paid for, even though they'd paid hardly anything. But they liked the concept, so Moore came up with a whole pantheon of new characters to kill off.

(I don't think the whole mess of Charlton characters have made them as much as Watchmen, so it's an interesting philosophical question whether DC did the right thing by pushing the change. Rorschach is a compelling character, and he would not have existed in that form as a reworked Question.)

[bcholmes.livejournal.com]

*nod* I was aware of that history (I've got a cool limited-edition Watchmen hardcover that reprints Moore's original proposal . At the same time, I didn't think that The Question was anywhere near as absolutist nor as violent as Rorschach.

Here's an interesting interview with Moore, who says:

[Ditko's] views were apparent through his portrayals of Mr. A and the protesters or beatniks that occasionally surfaced in his other work. I think this article was the first to actually point out that, yes, Steve Ditko did have a very right-wing agenda (which of course, he's completely entitled to), but at the time, it was quite interesting, and that probably led to me portraying [Watchmen character] Rorschach as an extremely right-wing character.

[wild-irises.livejournal.com]

the notion that a career criminal might prosper in commerce among free men

*boggle* How ever not?

[xthlcm.livejournal.com]

In all my life, I have never met a die-hard, Fountainhead-bashing Objectivist who had a real job involving making money in an open market. I had a friend who was pretty die-hard until he met a bunch of really vehement Objectivists, who did things like protest Mother Theresa appearances. My friend got scared, then he got a job in one of the Fortune 500s that Randroids worship, then he became a property owner. He has now apparently migrated to level-headed libertarianism.

I've heard of members of the species that are gainfully employed, including one scary fucker who was the section chief of a company I interviewed with back in '98. One of the mandated questions in the interview was "Have you ever read 'Atlas Shrugged'?". If the answer was "No", the interviewer donned a sheepish smile and gave the interviewee a free copy. They were like fucking Scientologists.

[daniluxe.livejournal.com]

I remember reading several years ago that Ditko had some funny beliefs but I didn't know it was O'ism. Yuck. Perhaps Mr. A is an allusion to "A is A", a mantra in Miss Rand's philosophy (I don't think she ever realized that it's a meaningless tautology).