Steve Ditko and THE HORNS

So apparently Steve Ditko is launching another campaign against Stan Lee, and this time he seems to be hinting that he wants to smear Jack Kirby a little bit too.

Now, I'm all for a little inter-creator kvetching, and I love getting insights into the history of superhero comics, but... C'mon, Steve. We all know you're a kooky, reclusive, bootstrappy Objectivist curmudgeon; and we all know Stan's a self-promoting glory-hound nutbag. YOU DON'T HAVE TO KEEP REMINDING US.

I mean, Steve Ditko is very obviously a genius of the comics industry, and has created and/or co-created some of the most intriguing characters in superhero comics. I could probably write an entire essay on The Question and his weird ties to Ayn Rand's philosophy (and Alan Moore's fairly excellent parody of that philosophy in Watchmen), and of course somebody like Spider-Man couldn't be ignored even if you wanted to.

But the real secret scoop I want on Ditko's days at Marvel in the 1960's is... What's up with the "ILY" hands and/or "Devil Horn" hands (he varied on the thumb-placement)??? The fucker has always remained really quiet about that question. The only answer I could find in my MINUTES of research was a quote saying “Because it looks more interesting that way,” and I think that's just BULLSHIT.

His two most recognizable characters at Marvel are both constantly either telling speakers of ASL that they love them, or hailing Lucifer, and I suspect some sort of hidden narrative.

Or, at least, I want to pretend that there's some sort of hidden narrative. In fact, since Ditko remains so staunchly silent about things in general, I'm going to just go ahead and create my own narrative.

I think that whenever Ditko and Lee were having slappy-fights around the office, he'd go and throw a bunch of Satanic imagery into a Spidey comic. Then, later, when he was working on Dr. Strange and feeling more relaxed, he'd have the good Doctor secretly spreading messages of love. And unless Steve Ditko writes to me personally to correct this, I am considering it historically-accurate. Also, fuck Objectvism and bootstraps and all that other stupid right-wing garbage. Fuck it all to hell!

(This blog-post brought to you by boredom and the Fuck Objectivism to Hell Foundation.)