A person who asked me to omit his name wrote to ASK me…
You've spoken a bit about Jack Kirby and his various inkers. I was wondering your feelings on Steve Ditko being inked by anyone other than Steve Ditko. Also, you once mentioned Stan thought Ditko was a great inker over Kirby's pencils in the relatively rare times he inked Jack. Would you agree?
My tastes evolve over the years and my thinking now is that most of the artists who drew comics before 1980 — and by "most," I mean like 90% or more — would have been better served by inking what they penciled and penciling what they inked. This is if we're only talking about what would have resulted in the best artwork, not what would have led to them making more money or not working too hard.
It would certainly include Steve Ditko. He was one of those guys who, when he did the whole job, added a lot of what was wonderful in the inking stage. Other inkers — even the best of them — only diluted what he did.
A good friend of mine in the business, the artist Doug Wildey, used to explain the worst possible way you could employ him. To guarantee you got the worst work he ever did, all you had to do was to have him ink some other artist or have some other artist ink him. In certain circumstances, he might make more money doing one and not the other but that would never result in the best artwork with which he could be involved.
There are times when it simply isn't practical from a deadline/production standpoint to have one person pencil and ink…and there are some artists who are way better (or even happier) doing just one and not the other. Often on forums, I see people arguing over who was the best inker for Curt Swan or John Buscema or someone else who almost always just did pencils. My theory is this: If the publishers had made it financially better — or at least equal — for Swan and Buscema (among many others) to ink their own work…and if they'd had reasonable deadlines and done it for a year or two get back into practice, they would have output work so good that we'd never want to see anyone else finish their artwork.
There were a few times when someone else inked Joe Kubert's work. The result was an interesting hybrid novelty but it was never anywhere near as good as Joe doing the whole thing by himself. I believe the same was true of most artists of that generation. I liked Neal Adams art inked by Neal Adams more than any Neal Adams art inked by anyone who wasn't Neal Adams.
That wasn't always practical…and at time, Neal might have wanted to do pencils only on certain jobs. There are also times when it's desirable to have the inker dominate…like on the old T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents comic which was largely built around the work and style of Wally Wood. Wood couldn't have produced all the necessary material by himself so a lot of it was him inking someone else…including Steve Ditko. On that book, it was right and proper that the finished product look like Wally Wood art. When Ditko was drawing Spider-Man and Dr. Strange, I think it fit the material better for it to be pure Ditko.
I don't think Stan Lee liked any of the zillion artists who drew for Marvel more than he liked Steve Ditko. He had more respect for Kirby and thought nobody beat Jack when it came to creating new characters and stories. But he told me, "If I could have drawn like anyone who worked for us, I would have wanted to draw like Steve Ditko." So he loved it when Ditko inked Kirby even though, as he also told me, Ditko was too valuable as a penciler to have that happen very often.
I used to like it more than I do now. I feel the same about either of them inked by Wally Wood or some other inker who merged and submerged their style except, as noted, when Ditko was essentially ghost-penciling for someone as he did for Wood on T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents.
This discussion reminds me of a question I got from someone a while ago and didn't get around to answering. He asked, "If a magic genie could grant you the power to draw like any comic book artist who ever lived, who would you have picked?" I was going to say Wally Wood but then I realized that I'd never get anything done in life. I'd just sit home all day drawing naked women.
