Thursday, February 4, 2010

Steve Ditko Killed Indiana Jones

When Marvel's The Further Adventures of Indiana Jones came out,  I was thrilled.  I was a huge fan of the movies, and now there was a comic book.

It wasn't very good.

It wasn't horrible, but the comics lacked the energy of the movies.  Some things just don't translate to other mediums well.  This was one of those things.

I stuck with the book, but when artist Steve Ditko took over, I found myself reading it simply to ride it out until the end.  Ditko's art, which was passable in his younger years, destroyed what little life was left in the book.
Look at it.  That's one of the better pages. 

Ditko's art was ... freaky.  Eyes were too wide.  People were in strange poses.  Nothing looked right.  His run lasted less than 10 issues if I remember correctly, but one issue was too much.

Dark Horse picked up the license years later, but my view of the comic was so skewed that I pretty much stayed away from it.  People told me it was a fine read, but the horror that was Ditko burned itself into my psyche, and there was no way I was going to destroy the Indie comic memory even more.  Hell, if the Dark Horse comics were bad it could ruin my movie and novel memories, too, through some sort of weird cultural spillover.

So now I stay away from all Indiana Jones comic books.  It's necessary in order to keep my sanity.  And as for Steve Ditko ... I don't want to say he was on some sort of future recall diet drug that caused hallucinations, but Jesus his art was bad.     

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