Steve Ditko's Cutting Boards

[Unca Ben]

I sometimes read that Steve Ditko has, or had, “huge” stacks of comic art pages gathering dust in his studio. Some articles say “stacks of Spider-Man pages”. (And yeah, there’s the horrific cutting board angle).

 

In regard to those stacks being ASM pages, did Ditko ever get much of his art, ASM or otherwise, back from Marvel?

 

Point being, what particular ASM pages (or complete stories) could Ditko possibly have? Enough to be “stacks and stacks”?

 

Even in my relatively obscure corner of the Original Art collecting world, I’ve seen or heard of many Ditko ASM pages being auctioned, traded or sold so it’s obvious he doesn’t have those.

 

It’s my recollection that pages from almost every issue from ASM 6 on up have made it to the market. The AF 15 story is in the Library of Congress. Quite a few complete stories such as ASM 6, 10, 30, and a few others I don’t recall, have been split up and sold.

 

I have never heard of individual pages, or complete stories from Amazing Spider-Man 1 through 5 being sold, although I wouldn’t be surprised if some on these boards know of, or own, these.

 

So what could Steve Ditko have? ASM 1 -5? Are there many pages from ASM 7 - 38 that haven’t been accounted for? The two annuals?

 

I’d love to hear from the more knowledgeable members on this. And I certainly don’t expect to discover where the OA pages from ASM 1-5 are.

 

[dem1138]

The only story I ever heard was that someone went to Ditko's studio many, many years ago, and saw him using an ASM page as a cutting board. It was one instance but the story has since become legend.

 

Ditko is also reputed to still have a number of complete stories. A number of complete stories also reside in private collections.

 

The larger issue becomes the fact that these ASM pages are rare, but only in the marketplace. So the question becomes, how confident can a buyer be in spending top dollar for a decent page if the rarity is manufactured, because the art to many other stories exist, but are not for sale. If they don't hit the market for 20 years, then you're in good shape, but if 10 complete stories hit the market tomorrow (and there's a .0000001% chance of that ever happening), yes the market will absorb them all, but will that dampen the value of "lesser" pages.

 

I have no doubt the limited pool of current complete story owners will ensure that even if the books do come up for sale, that they will be parsed out on the market over time to sustain and more likely increase values.

[thethedew]

The only story I ever heard was that someone went to Ditko's studio many, many years ago, and saw him using an ASM page as a cutting board. It was one instance but the story has since become legend.

 

It's possible, but calm heads have also attempted to debunk.

 

Here's the debunk article, which also has links to the original story.

 

Personally, I'd hope that he's not destroying stuff, there's Micronauts pages I'd like to... know still exist!!

 

http://fourrealities.blogspot.com/2008/08/curious-incident-of-cut-artwork.html

 

Andrew

[dgarthwaite-migration]

Greg Theakston made the claim Ditko used art pages as a cutting board and it was Charlton art, not ASM.

 

DG

[Ferran Delgado]

Thanks for the link, Andrew.

 

According Vartanoff's inventory of the art stored by Marvel around early 1980, there were all the complete Ditko issues except:

-AF #15, #18, #20, #22, #23, #29 and #32.

Probably they were robbed, donated, whatever...

 

The complete list is here:

http://www.tcj.com/archive-viewer-issue-105/?pid=8473

 

How many of these complete issues reached Ditko? Probably just a few. Many of them (probably the early issues) were stolen when the unfamous box near the elevator disappeared from Marvel new offices.

 

My bet is that many of these robbed complete issues are still complete in the home of the first original buyer/thieft/art dealer, while many of them were split and changed hands many times.

 

Does anyone have a list of all the issues that reached the market?

[VintageComics]

If I'm not mistaken ASM #26 exists in it's entirety.

 

I saw it on display in Eugene, Oregon when they had a massive comic and comic art display in late 2009.