The 1990s marked the end of Steve Ditko's mainstream comic book career, but it was a long, strange ride before he got to that final milestone that involved the artist bouncing between a number of comic book companies during the decade.

The journey for Ditko began when he was still working at Marvel Comics. In 1989, Ditko finished up the final ongoing mainstream series that he would ever work on, as Speedball, starring a character that Ditko helped created and whose series Ditko co-plotted with Roger Stern, was canceled after ten issues. However, while sometimes this period is written about in terms of Marvel sending Ditko the door right after that, that really was not the case.

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No, while Speedball was the last ongoing series that Ditko worked on for Marvel, the company continued to make it a point to find assignments for the artist to work on, because there clearly was a desire from Marvel's editorial staff to find work for such a legendary artist if they could find it.

When Marvel Comics Presents debuted while Ditko was still working on Speedball, the anthology series was a perfect fit for Ditko, as he could work on a variety of characters.

In Marvel Comics Presents #7, Ditko did a Namor story with Hollis Bright...

In Marvel Comics Presents #10, Ditko returned to Machine Man with Mike Rockwitz...

One amusing bit is that in the late 1980s/early 1990s, Ditko often appeared in Spider-Man Annuals. You might think, "But wait, Brian, didn't Ditko insist on not drawing Spider-Man upon his return to Marvel?" That's true, so the stories he did were all back-ups featuring other characters, like a Speedball back-up in Amazing Spider-Man Annual #22 (to help promote Speedball's then-current solo series)...

and, of all things, a Solo back-up in Amazing Spider-Man Annual #24...

The problem, of course, is not that people were not finding work for him, but that they were not finding enough work for him. This was still a guy who believed that he could do a regular series and he was mostly getting short feature work.

Around this time, Marvel decided to launch a new series that Ditko would be heavily involved in. During the 1980s, Marvel had a book called Marvel Fanfare, which was designed to be a special book for the direct market that would have fancy paper and would spotlight stories from Marvel's top creators. As time went by, however, the way that editor Al Milgrom was able to get top creators on to the book was to use inventory stories a lot. Inventory stories are stories that were originally intended as fill-ins for other comics that did not end up getting used, so Marvel had them lying around in their, well, inventory. Milgrom would work these inventory stories into the series when he felt that they were of a high quality.

When Marvel Fanfare ended, Marvel replaced it with a series called Marvel Super-Heroes, which was an over-sized quarterly book that was made up mostly out of inventory stories. One of these inventory stories led to perhaps the last great comic book character that Steve Ditko would co-create...

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When Marvel Super-Heroes first launched, Ditko's involvement was actually in brand-new Speedball stories made just for the quarterly series...

It seems as though the book also used some stories that were originally meant for Avengers Spotlight or Marvel Comic Presents. Honestly, there was no real difference between Marvel Comics Presents and Marvel Super-Heroes, so something written for one could easily appear in the other. Ditko did a Hulk story for the third issue with Hollis Bright and Marshal Rogers...

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One interesting aspect about inventory stories is that sometimes, they were only in SCRIPT form. Someone writes a script, it sits in a filing cabinet and then, when a fill-in issue or story is needed, the editor takes out the script and assigns it to an artist who then draws it. This way, you only have to pay the artist if you decide to use the script.

This is what happened when Will Murray wrote a script for an Iron Man story where the armored hero fought against Doctor Doom, along with a brand-new superhero who helped Shellhead out. Murray's script was just sitting there when they assigned Steve Ditko to draw the story.

It appeared in Marvel Super-Heroes #8 and it introduced the world to Squirrel Girl!

Murray later described the genesis of the story, "Actually I created Squirrel Girl in script form without any artist input. Tom Morgan was originally going to draw it, but when he dropped out, I requested Ditko and got him. Ditko did a great job in bringing my baby to life. He invented that knuckle spike. It wasn’t in the script. I based Squirrel Girl ironically enough on a long–ago girlfriend who read comics and was into "critters"—wild animals of all types. Coincidentally, she was big Ditko fan. I think I got the idea because I had a bunch of squirrels running around my roof and sometimes coming in through my open bedroom window and inspiration struck.

By a strange coincidence, although I never described SG physically in my story, Ditko somehow managed to capture the likeness of my old girlfriend"

The story awesomely ends with Squirrel Girl having defeated Doctor Doom...with squirrels!

As noted, the problem for Ditko at this point is that he needed to have more work than the occasional short story that would appear in a quarterly book like Marvel Super-Heroes. He began looking for more work and he luckily got into touch with Jim Shooter, who had left Marvel and had formed his own comic book company, Valiant Comics, and Ditko looked to see if Shooter had any work for him at Valiant.

Shooter cleverly came up with the perfect assignment for Ditko at the time.

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The problem for Shooter is that it was early in the history of Valiant Comics and, at the time, circa 1990/1991, they were not yet doing their own comic books. They were just doing licensed comics. They had the license for the WWE (then called the WWF) and for comics based on Nintendo characters.

It was with this in mind that Steve Ditko came to visit Shooter.

RELATED: Shades of a Changing Man: Steve Ditko at DC Comics

Shooter recalled, "So, we were making Nintendo and WWF comics. An interesting (to me) tidbit is that David Lapham’s first professional comics work was for one of our WWF books.

Then one day, Steve Ditko came to see me.

I don’t know exactly how long Marvel had kept Steve on after I left there, but eventually they’d cut him loose. Jerks.

I’d never before seen Steve looking…I don’t know. Worn down? Worried? Troubled? Hard to say, Steve doesn’t exactly show his feelings much, and was not the type to express despair or even its lesser cousins. But he didn’t look happy. He didn’t look well. And he needed work.

I didn’t have the power to make something to suit him, and believe me, Steve is the kind who would starve rather than violate his principles, but luckily, I had WWF scripts waiting to be drawn! The WWF “faces” (short for babyfaces, good guys) were good enough and the “heels,” or bad guys, were evil enough to pass muster with Steve. I think that was the one time I was happy that we had the WWF.

He started working for us.

And here's one story by Ditko...

And here's another sample...

The problem here was that Valiant's wrestling license was not a long term gig, either. The series lasted just five issues. Shooter was soon taking part in the creation of what would be the Valiant Comics universe and Shooter made sure to find Ditko occasional gigs there, as well. After all, it wasn't like Shooter was avoiding the use of older artists, as Don Perlin was one of the main artists in the early years of the Valiant Universe and he was only a couple of years younger than Ditko at the time.

Here's Ditko on Shadowman #6...

Here he is on Magnus, Robot Fighter #18...

The problem for Ditko here was that Shooter was then ousted as the head of Valiant in the middle of 1992 and with Shooter gone, so, too, was Ditko's main advocate at Valiant.

Shooter later recalled,

Not too long after that, I got a call from Steve Ditko. The new management at VALIANT had dumped him in a callous and demeaning manner (my characterization of the events, not his). And it sounded like it got to him. He sounded depressed. It must have been one harsh rejection. I’m not going to try to quote him, but for the first and only time to me, he said things about people hating his work. He sounded hurt.

Maybe I read too much into it, maybe I’m coloring it all wrong. Maybe Steve would deny the above. I don’t claim to know what was going on in his mind, but that’s what it sounded like, that’s what it felt like to me.

My turn to be sympathetic and supportive.

Not much I could do to help at that point.

Shooter had recently received a call from Frank Miller commiserating over Shooter's then-recent ouster at Valiant, so Shooter called Miller. Shooter noted, "At that point, Frank was doing a lot of work with Dark Horse. I said, “I don’t know whether Mike Richardson would take my call, but I know he’ll take yours.” I suggested that Frank call Dark Horse Master and Commander Mike and tell him that right now would be a great time for to do a project with Steve Ditko. I thought it would cheer Steve up considerably to hear from Mike, if there was work to be had.

Frank, a good soul, called Mike. Mike is also a good soul, has abiding respect for Steve and his work and was happy to get a heads up about Steve being available. Mike called Steve. Dark Horse indeed, did something with Steve, although as previously mentioned, Steve is pretty strict about what he’ll do and what he won’t, so as I recall, it wasn’t a very extensive project. But, I suspect it felt good for Steve to get an offer right about then."

The result was a one-shot called The Safest Place in the World.

Luckily for Ditko, this was int the middle of the speculator boom. With so many companies trying out new lines of comics, there was a lot of work to go around and Topps tried to launch a line of comics based on Jack Kirby ideas and Ditko did one of these series with Roy Thomas...

They were all miniseries with the possibility of becoming regular series, but that did not happen.

The next few years were rather lean ones for Ditko.

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In 1993, Jim Shooter launched a new comic book company, Defiant Comics, and he made sure to work Ditko into this company, as well.

Shooter came up with an idea for a sort of science fiction twist on angels called Dark Dominion. Ditko was going to draw the first issue, a #0, which would be released as a trading card set that could be put together to form a comic book. The problem was that Ditko wanted out of the comic during the middle of that first issue!

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Shooter recalled:

Halfway through the book, Steve came to the office to see me. He gave me the pages he’d done and said he couldn’t do the rest of the story.

“Why not?!’

Because, he said, the story and the character were Platonic and he was Aristotelian.

“You’re gonna have to explain that to me, Steve.”

Simple. Plato believed in the world one can’t see as well as the world one can. Aristotle believed that what you see is what you get. Period. Dark Dominion was Platonic, and therefore, anathema.

I argued. You can’t see viruses, I said, but they can make you sick. And what about all the other things invisible and unknown to Aristotle that have since been discovered?

He wouldn’t budge.

I did get him to agree not to leave me high and dry on #0, after we’d already solicited it, after we’d advertised the fact that he was doing it.

He reluctantly agreed to finish the book.

Shooter noted that Ditko did not more work for Defiant after that.

In the mid-1990s, Mariano Nicieza edited some licensed books for Marvel and he found spots for Ditko on these licensed books. In 1995, there was a short-lived cartoon series based on the Phantom set in the future called, appropriately enough, Phantom 2040. Ditko drew the miniseries adaptation for Marvel...

The first issue had a poster by Ditko...inked by John Romita Sr.! How's that for a fascinating piece of comic book history?

In 1996, Ditko did some back-ups for Marvel's short-lived Power Rangers licensed series...

Ditko's last work for Marvel was a short Iron Man story with Len Wein in Marvel's black and white series, Shadows and Light #1...

His last work for Marvel or DC happened later in 1998, when Mark Millar was doing a back-up story for DC's Orion series and he specifically asked if Ditko could draw the book. Paul Kupperberg contacted Ditko and he agreed. The story ended up not appearing in the series, but then DC later published it in a collection of the New Gods stories of this era, Tales of the New Gods.

That was it for Ditko as a mainstream comic book artist. He retired in 1998.

That was NOT it, though, for Ditko as a comic book artist. We'll follow up on that final era of his career soon.