The man who first made Spider-Man swing (all gangly-like) died yesterday at the age of 90. In a way—to me anyway—the real news was that Steve Ditko had been living all this time. He was so long out of the limelight. He coveted none of it: no premieres, no cameos. I'd like to say he was noble in this but he was a bit of an odd duck.

The Steve Ditko-penned Spideys were always my favorites. When I was collecting in the ‘70s, and “The Amazing Spider-Man” hadn’t even reached #150, his were the ones I coveted, in cheap plastic bags at Schinder's in downtown Minneapolis, or in sleeker plastic bags at Comic City in Uptown. I got a lot of them. I think at one point I had like Amazing Spider-Man #8 all the way to the present. Not bad for a teenage wallflower.

I liked how unheroic Ditko made everyone look—particularly Spidey—at a time when I felt decidedly so. Spidey looked like the least likely superhero. His feet were often so twisted in midair, he looked like he'd trip himself.

Back then, I'd assumed it was Ditko's geekiness, his nerdiness, that eventually got him booted off of Spidey. I assumed they wanted Spidey handsomer and more heroic. Not so, according to Douglas Wolk's review of Blake Bell's 2008 biography of Ditko:

He split with Lee and Marvel in 1966. By then, he’d fallen under the spell of Ayn Rand and Objectivism, and started producing an endless string of ham-fisted comics about how A is A and there is no gray area between good and evil and so on. “The Hawk and the Dove,” for instance, concerns two superhero brothers who … oh, you’ve already figured it out. 

And in case you haven‘t, mouse over the above image.

A few years back, my colleague, Ross Pfund, said, RE: Ditko’s Objectivism, “How much must he hate it that his most famous creation's most famous quote is ‘With great power comes great responsibility’?” 

This morning, my friend Jason Lamb wrote the following: “I've read thousands upon thousands of comics books over the course of nearly 50 years, but nothing has impacted me more than the images here. Thank you and R.I.P., Steve Ditko.”

Then he posted this. I know it well: Spider-Man #33:

That last panel is actually a partial of a full page. And the whole scene was re-done on the big screen in “Spider-Man: Homecoming”—more than 50 years after he drew it. 

What a moment in time.