Thursday, March 21, 2024

Strange and Terrific! Ditko stories

Some of my favourite Steve Ditko stories are the shorts which appeared in comics such as Amazing Fantasy and Journey Into Mystery and, generally speaking, the more existentially karmic the better. 

For example, here's the first page of The Man on the Endless Stairway!, scanned from Journey Into Mystery #87:


And you just know this won't end well for the hapless Carl Cragg!

This scan is sourced from the Atomic Kommie Comics blog, which suggests with a query that it might be a never-reprinted story as of 2016. Well, it was reprinted shortly afterwards in Marvel Masters of Suspense: Stan Lee & Steve Ditko Omnibus #2 in 2019. 

However, it was reprinted at least five times in the previous century, according to the GCD: by Alan Class in Astounding Stories #44 and Weird Planets #4; in IPCs Terrific! #41; in Aredit -Artima's Eclipso #19; and in Yaffa's The Mighty Thor #2, from which the scan below is sourced:


The black and white printing is attractive, however it is rather lightly reproduced. 

A bolder printing can be found in Terrific! #41, however something decidedly Strange occurs in that reprinting:


That's right - Dr. Strange is enlisted as the host of the tale ala the Mysterious Traveller and other such hosts familiar to comics readers. He also appears on the final page of the story, in which Cragg meets his fate:


I can confirm Dr. Strange hosted other such stories in the pages of Terrific!, for example, in the following issue for the story Long Live The Queen!;


And on the final page of the story:


Long Live The Queen! was originally published in Journey Into Mystery #88, and also happens to appear unadulterated in Yaffa's The Mighty Thor #2.

I haven't sourced the Dr. Strange images -  a task for another day!

Update: The Dr. Strange figure in The Man on the Endless Stairway! splash page appeared on the cover of Strange Tales #146 and in the interior art:


And the Dr. Strange figure at the end of the story hails from the cover of Strange Tales #148:




No comments: