In the late 1960s, DC Comics was going through a major transition. It was trying to adapt to the major threat that it was facing from the upstart Marvel Comics, who was challenging the stronghold that DC Comics had held on the superhero comic book market since the late 1940s (in part because most companies abandoned the superhero market entirely by 1952). Carmine Infantino was named the new editorial director of the company and he set out to try to change the creative set-up at the company. Two of Infantino's biggest attempts to keep Marvel at bay was to sign away Marvel's biggest artists. The 1970 addition of Jack Kirby was the more famous move, but Infantino likely felt that he had achieved a similarly big success when he convinced Steve Ditko to join DC Comics in 1968.

Ditko was very much still a big name in comics even after leaving Marvel in 1966. He was named the top artist in the 1967 Alley Awards. So Infantino believed that it was going to be a boon for DC when Ditko joined the company in 1968. The company could not have known, however, that Ditko would be gone by the end of the year, before returning seven years later for a less celebrated return.

RELATED: How Steve Ditko Defined Spider-Man for a Generation

The story of Ditko's tenure at DC Comics is a fascinating one, as it really seems like a case of a good turn not going unpunished. With Charlton's Action Heroes line of books (based around Ditko's Captain Atom, Blue Beetle and the Question) not doing particularly well, the line closed and Charlton began to concentrate on horror and licensed comic books. Ditko was wooed to DC Comics. He initially worked for longtime DC Comics editor Murray Boltinoff. Ditko was expected to bring new characters with him and he sure did so with the introduction of the Creeper in Showcase #73 and Hawk and Dove in Showcase #75.

However, as soon as Ditko got to DC Comics, he put in a good word for his old editor at Charlton Comics, Dick Giordano, who Ditko was friends with at the time (stress "at the time") and so DC Comics hired Giordano and had him become Ditko's personal editor at DC, beginning with Showcase #75 (Giordano joined midway through the issue, so he had little impact on that specific story).

Ditko surely did not realize that getting his old friend a gig at DC Comics was going to end up negatively affecting him in the end, but that's what happened, as where Boltinoff was hand's off and allowed Ditko free rein, Giordano was anything but and that quickly led to a brief stint at DC Comics for Ditko.

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The Creeper was very much in the same vein as the Question, with Jack Ryder being the stand-in for Vic Sage, but the fascinating thing is that Ditko actually loosened up his rather strict views on character depiction for Jack Ryder. When we first meet him, he is exhibiting some notable Objectivist traits, like mocking a doctor who is arguing that the police are too violent, but he is also being a wise ass about it and that is not the "Objectivist" way (Don Segall scripted the first story).

He is shot while wearing the costume but the scientist saves his life with a special serum that bonds the costume to Jack but also gives him super-strength and a healing factor...

So the Creeper is sort of the dual nature of man. You've got the Objectivist stuff, but also the sort of freewheeling aspect of human nature, as well.

RELATED: Ditko's Doctor Strange Was Psychedelic Before Psychedelic Was a Thing

That same concept would play out in the introduction of Hawk and Dove, where the two brothers, Hank and Don Hall, are too caught up in their individual beliefs that they conflict with the Objectivist beliefs espoused by their judge father...

They then gain superpowers...

While Ditko's intent was to show that both Hawk and Dove were too caught up in their own beliefs and then contrast them with their right-thinking father, young Steve Skeates was scripting the book and he thought that Ditko was unintentionally leaning toward Hawk's direction. Giordano agreed with Skeates.

Ditko had already started on Beware the Creeper #1 (in this instance, the "showcase" in Showcase was just a formality, the character was assured its own series right from the start) when Giordano got to DC, so Ditko plotted that issue and Denny O'Neil scripted it, but with Hawk and Dove set to get their own series, Giordano decided that he was not comfortable with Ditko plotting either series. Now O'Neil and Skeates would plot the books and Ditko would draw from their plots and then they would script.

Thus, Ditko actually had less freedom at DC now than he had at Marvel when he had full plotting control of Amazing Spider-Man and the Doctor Strange feature in Strange Tales!

Ditko stuck around for a couple of issues of Hawk and Dove under this format and three issues of Beware the Creeper before he had enough and quit both series. It was not even a full year at DC. He returned to Charlton and the freedom that they gave him. It is possible that Giordano also asked for changes to be made to one of Ditko's Creeper issues, as there seems to be a number of re-drawn pages in the later issues. Ditko apparently quit midway through his final issue, so half the book is nominally his, but it looks like someone just re-drew the pages. Ditko also had a recurrence of tuberculosis at this point, so that also played a role in him taking a break from DC.

Ditko would stay at Charlton until 1975, when Giordano was no longer working at DC Comics (Giordano worked with Neal Adams at Continuity for a few years before returning to DC Comics and rising to become their top editor).

Ditko's return to DC was a whole other scenario.

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By the time that Ditko returned to DC Comics in 1975, he was no longer the big name that he had been when he first arrived there. He was still a respected artist, though, and Paul Levitz, in particular, made it a point to work with Ditko at a time that DC was trying to expand their line of comics into new areas, as DC and Marvel were in a bit of a battle for the newsstand, with each company trying to come up with new ideas to eat up more display space than its rival.

Levitz and Ditko co-created a sword and sorcery book called Stalker, about a warrior who lost his soul and was slowly turning into the demonic being who he had lost his soul to.

Around this same time, he tried to do a Creeper revival for Joe Orlando...

It did not go over.

RELATED: When Charlton Comics Hit the Bullseye With Steve Ditko

Ditko then took another break from DC, before returning to work there on a fairly regular basis from 1977-1980.

However, as we will see with his work at Marvel in the 1980s, Ditko was now mostly just doing regular art assignments rather than being a big mover and shaker anymore. The one exception was with his attempt to launch a new series, Shade the Changing Man, with writer Michael Fleisher...

This was an out there series that didn't seem to catch on...

It lasted just eight issues.

Ditko did more Creeper back-ups in World's Finest Comics and he also did a Starman feature in Adventure Comics in 1980...

By this time, though, Ditko had already returned to Marvel and with Giordano back at DC in 1981, Ditko seemed to have backed away (although he did return to draw some of his characters for DC's Who's Who and he did a Superman pin-up in Superman #400).

Do note that when DC purchased the Charlton characters, they tried to work out a deal with Ditko to return to the characters that he had created, but he couldnt' work anything out so DC moved on with different creative teams.

Ditko was was now about to enter the last major phase of his mainstream comic book career.