THE HOWARD ROARK OF COMICS

SPIDER-MAN CO-CREATOR STEVE DITKO WAS A GREAT EXAMPLE OF, AND DIRE WARNING TO, OBJECTIVIST POP ARTISTS.

- BRIAN DOHERTY

OF ALL THE popular storytelling artists striving to emulate Ayn Rand, the most significant was Steve Ditko.

Ditko, a comic book artist, is most famous for co-creating Spider-Man and Dr. Strange. Rand, in addition to writing novels that still sell hugely seven decades down the line, developed a philosophy she called Objectivism, the politics of which were highly libertarian and highly controversial.

Ditko’s commitment to Rand’s ideas led him down a curious and troubled path, and made him resemble a real-life Rand character. From developing enduring legends for Marvel Comics in the 1960s to Kickstartering in the 2010s with fewer than 150 sponsors his uniquely and often bizarrely abstract stories, Ditko emulated aspects of both of Rand’s most prominent fictional protagonists.

Like Howard Roark, the individualist architect of The Fountainhead, Ditko insisted on doing the creative work his soul demanded, expressing his deepest self and values, even if few customers or patrons appreciated it. Like John Galt, the scientific wizard who led the strike in Atlas Shrugged, he was willing to walk away from his greatest inventions when he thought they’d fallen into hands that no longer deserved his best efforts.

Ditko’s most enduring impact on comics has embedded in it a personal irony. Spider-Man, created with writer/editor Stan Lee (who milked far more public relations mileage out of his role at Marvel), is credited with pioneering the idea of a superhero with feet of clay and everyday human problems, haunted by self-doubt. Ditko was contemptuous of that perceived quality, writing that “Lee’s...flawed, neurotic, antihero rejected the best standards for a hero as rational being at his best and as an agent of justice.”