Steve Ditko

Steve Ditko (born 2 November 1927) is an American comic book artist and writer best known as the co-creator of Spider-Man and Doctor Strange. He was inducted into the comics industry's Jack Kirby Hall of Fame in 1990. Ditko was born in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, the son of Eastern European immigrants. Ditko grew up the son of a Depression-era mill-worker, with a sister named either Rita or Annamarie, and a younger brother, Pat. (U.S. Census records of 1930 indicate that both his parents, Stephen and Anna Ditko, were born in Pennsylvania, and his grandparents were all from Czechoslovakia. He had only one sister at that time, Anna M., who was about two years older.) Good with his hands, Ditko in junior high school crafted wooden models of German airplanes to aid civilian World War II aircraft-spotters. He was influenced by the work of newspaper cartoonists, particularly Will Eisner, writer-artist of The Spirit, and read Batman comic books. Ditko graduated from Johnstown High School in...