We are getting so close to point where I can just release a big post collecting all of my Steve Ditko articles. Unless someone sends in a suggestion that I think is worth writing about, we're really just at one more article before I collect them all. Of course, though, if you do want to write in suggestions for future Steve Ditko articles, I'm still accepting them. I don't particularly mind pushing the collection off another couple of articles. It's not like we're working on any sort of deadline here. So if you have an idea for something Ditko-related that you'd like to see me write about, drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com.

Anyhow, based on a suggestion from reader Rob H., we take a look at Steve Ditko's history of amazing fight sequences.

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Here is the most important thing that you have to remember about Steve Dikto and fight sequences. He didn't really do any of them until he started on Spider-Man. I mean, don't get me wrong, of course he drew the occasional fight sequence, but generally speaking Ditko's stories for Marvel and Charlton dealt with horror. He had only inked a single issue of Incredible Hulk before he started work on Amazing Fantasy, and the introduction of Spider-Man. Actually, think about that for a bit. The first superhero he designed was also one of the greatest looking superhero costumes of all-time. Talk about beginner's luck! Not only did Ditko not draw superheroes, but he barely even drew one of the other dominant genres of the late 1950s/early 1960s, which is the western comic book. Westerns would often have plenty of fight sequences in them.

Ditko, though, not only specialized in horror and fantasy, but he barely even worked on your standard "monster that fights people" character. I noted this during my recent article about Ditko's time drawing monsters for Marvel that Ditko mostly stuck to the cerebral/spooky stuff instead of the stories that had more fight scenes in them.

For instance, in one of those "twisty" stories that Ditko became so famous for, he came up with a powerful monster (who turned out to be a speck of dust that got washed away when water was poured on his "planet") and see how there is little actual fighting done by this monster...

So keep that in mind when we he suddenly had to start doing fight sequences on a regular basis in the pages of the Spider-Man feature.

You'll notice, then, that in the first couple of stories, Spider-Man doesn't do a whole lot of what you would think about as a traditional Ditko "fight".

Check out Amazing Fantasy #15's big fight scene...

(Although, note that that punch that Spidey throws is totally a precursor to future Ditko fight scenes)

Or the famous fight against the Fantastic Four in Amazing Spider-Man #1....

Not a BAD fight, but the fluidity certainly wasn't there like it would soon be.

Then the "fight" with the Chameleon later in the issue is basically nothing...

This is what makes the fight sequence that Ditko comes up with just THREE issues later so remarkable.

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The key to Steve Ditko's early years is clearly his meticulousness. The guy was famous for how much thought he put into every single movement of his characters. Everything had to make perfect sense within the movements of an actual person's body.

He then put all of these ideas together in Amazing Spider-Man #4, with a fight between Spider-Man and Sandman that shows a marked improvement in the fluidity and dynamic nature of the movements of the two guys in the fight...

The bit with him throwing Sandman into the staircase is brilliant.

Of course, this was still early Ditko, so he ends up going for a bit of a quick end to the fight (it is possible, also, that this is an influence of the way that the early Spider-Man stories were written. Stan Lee was more involved, so he might have wanted to go with the clever end to the fight rather than more of a traditional slugfest. Note that when Ditko gained complete control over the plotting of the series, the fights got longer)....

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However, I think that the more likely scenario is that Ditko just got more and more comfortable with the idea of fight choreography, so the fights naturally got stronger and stronger over the years.

I don't think that it is a coincidence that his most brilliant fight sequences all took place in his later issues of Amazing Spider-Man.

Like the astonishing "Spidey fighting a pile of crooks while chained up" bit from Amazing Spider-Man #27...

Here, you will also see the classic "Ditko flail," which he uses in these big group fight scenes, where Spider-Man essentially sort of flails his arms out to connect as much as possible. It's a great bit of design.

Of course, this fight scene is EXTRA brilliant because Ditko adds in the fact that Spider-Man's store-bought fill-in costume is losing its elasticity during the middle of the fight and yet it all completely works for Spider-Man's movements of the fight. This is pure genius here...

We'll close out Spider-Man by looking at one of the most underrated Spider-Man fights of all-time, the sequence AFTER Spider-Man has lifted the big pile of machinery in Amazing Spider-Man #33. He's exhausted (naturally) but has to then take on all of Doctor Octopus' operatives and this is one of those deals where Ditko makes it clear that no dialogue is necessary here...

For lack of a better word, just amazing.

Okay, so now Ditko was at the peak of his "fighting" ways, he would leave Marvel, but the fights remained amazing.

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At Charlton, Blue Beetle allowed Ditko to do the acrobatic Spider-Man style fights he was so good at...

while Question had more of a direct method of fighting. Each character had their own distinct fighting method...

As Rob noted when he wrote in with this one, what made Ditko so particularly interesting with his fight choreography is that you always knew where everyone was at any given point and what angle they were coming from, etc. It all made sense while it was also dynamic as all heck.

This is the standard that Ditko would hold up to himself in all of his work for the rest of his career. The Ditko fight sequence would remain a thing of comic book legend.

Thanks for the suggestion, Rob!

Okay, folks, again, if you want to keep extending these Ditko article, feel free to keep sending in suggestions for topics! My e-mail is brianc@cbr.com!