My Steve Ditko story

One of the great comics artists died recently.  Steve Ditko was the first to visualize Spider-Man, Dr. Octopus, J. Jonah Jameson, Dr. Strange, the Dread Dormammu, The Creeper, The Question, Mr. A, Squirrel Girl, and many other unforgettable characters.  Sometimes he wrote his own stories.  Other times he worked with writers like Stan Lee and Will Murray.  

I was also one of those lucky writers, although only for ten pages.  The story was “The Making of a Monster” in Blue Ribbon Comics issue 12.  My excitable editor, John Carbonaro, said, “Guess who I got to draw your story!”  

You can see by this panel, how much my dialogue contributed to the story.   

Dynamo Duck

Once upon a time, I was working on a project with John Carbonaro to bring the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents back to the comical book reading public.  (This was not the first time and would not be the last.) 

The characters were super heroes who were authorized by the United Nations and equipped by scientific geniuses.  One of their heavy hitters was Dynamo, a strong fellow whose molecular density was increased by a unique belt.  I liked him because he was less complicated than Superman.  He didn’t fly, didn’t have X-ray vision, etc.  He just hit things and survived things hitting him.

Anyway, one day John visited and said in a conspiratorial tone, “Dynamo Duck.”

That inspired a story by me which James W. Fry III drew in pencil, but that’s as far as it went.  But if I had drawn Dynamo Duck, this is what he would have looked like.

NOTE: Not to be confused with most of the stuff that comes up when you google “Dynamo Duck.”