If "doodles" can make for a productive 60-year career, then we need more "doodlers." How many of your favorite comic book artists spend eight hours a day drawing?



Did you witness the anger personally? He pointed out that credit for co-creation is not Lee's to give. Where is the anger in stating a fact?

Ditko's current work lacks the finesse and polish it used to have. He's eschewed almost all rendering and shading because it conveys 'grey areas' fer gosh sakes. It wouldn't be a good fit for Marvel or DC's output today. That's not his aim though. He's illustrating political tracts and even if I don't think Randism is a practical, workable system, his artwork is okay in that context. In fact, his drawings have become so simplified yet still individualistic that I've heard them described, favorably, as Outsider Art. I'm sure he could make some real money if he had a canny manager and if he would listen to him, like that would ever happen.

Ness,

I've come across libertarians that are really smart people. I've even come across a few "objectivists" who are also really smart people. One thing that these 2 groups share is that they're not dogmatic followers of one cultish leader.

Weemie,

I have no idea how much time my favorite comic book artists spend drawing per day. I don't care, since it's unimportant to whether I'll find their books any good. I do know now that one of favorites spends 8 hours a day doing pamphlet doodles for an idiotic religion that he long ago committed himself to and that it amounts to years and years of garbage. That makes me sad.

How many of your favorite comic book artists would *like* to spend 8 hours a day drawing? How much does your being sad count for that?

Steve Ditko's gotten to spend his life making the comics he wants. If that makes you so sad you can't see anything else in his work, that's on you. He'll still go to work every day and do what he wants to do, just like a lot of comic book artists who want nothing more than to spend their days drawing and making a living at it. Dozens, possibly hundreds, maybe even thousands of comic book artists who wanted to fill up pages with their work but get caught up in compromised positions instead.

Time is money. Steve Ditko spends his working hours supporting himself by drawing, just as he's done for decades. You don't even have to like his work to see admirable traits that would do very well to be more commonplace, and not only in comic books.

And he was one of your 'favorites' too. Go figure.

I have no idea. I've been asking for twenty years now what the hell it is Paul Smith does for a living.

Chris, Paris Hilton gets to spend all of her time doing whatever the fuck she wants to do. Is that admirable?

Using one's time to promote the immoral beliefs of a nitwit aren't exactly something I find praiseworthy. Golly gee, wouldn't it be great if everyone were happy? Lalala -- Fuck no. It depends on what makes them happy and whether it's something worth celebrating. It would make me happy if everything weren't reducible to commodity ("time is money"), but do you care about my happiness? No you do not.

And, as usual, you are incapable of understanding anything you read: I didn't say Ditko's supporting himself through his art made me sad, but that it's the choice to use his talent for creating absolute bullshit. See the difference? No, well, that makes me sad, too.

What makes me sad is that Ditko won't send me all the original art pages from Spider-Man that he has produced.

It makes me very sad.

He successfully spends his time creating exactly what he wants to create. That you see some sort of implicit quality in people who don't spend as much time creating exactly what they want to create says more about you. There's a wide world of people between Steve Ditko and Paris Hilton, and they're all human beings whose time and work you ignore.

Let's put this in terms you might understand. Do you think Robert Johnson would have approved in any way of the use heroin addict jailbait chasers have made of his music? Would his ghost look at Mick and Keef's upcoming anniversary (next week) and see anything at the celebration - if they even get together in a room - he could even recognize? It would probably scare him straight back into church.

Now look at Brian Wilson. How many months did he spend recording each of those individual sections of "Good Vibration"? Heard one after the other (on the Smile re-release or whatever) they form a transcendent melody that urges the listener to fill in the missing vocal part, and do it exactly the way the Beach Boys did it. If it's wrong, everybody will know. The lyrics aren't deep or clever, more of a generic greatness that perfectly expresses the music. "I love the colorful clothes she wears, and the way the sunlight plays upon her hair."

All that time and energy spent on a couple minutes of music, that most people dismiss because it's the Beach Boys. Sucks to be them, I guess.

Your time is finite. When it's gone, it's gone. We'll never have the Popeye storylines Segar never got to. We may never had all the pre-Popeye Thimble Theater strips. But he still showed up to work every day. So did Carl Barks, who did very well for himself at the end.

Without people who sit down and do the stuff you complain about, you have nothing to complain about. Rather than show your gratitude for teaching you to distinguish things, you dismiss their time and effort entirely so long as they tickle your unique fancies. You can't even appreciate the sight of someone who spends a lifetime doing what he wants without compromise just for its own sake. How often do you see that, anyway?

That has not a lick of relevance to anything we've been talking about.

How do you know Ditko's doing what he wants to do -- based on an interview, personal conversation, what? How do you know he's even happy?

One doesn't celebrate bad art because it teaches one what bad art is. That's just stupid. It's just something else to ignore in life. Thanks a lot for that.