Solar, Man Of The Atom #15 [1992]

SOLAR, MAN OF THE ATOM #15 [1992] is the third and final issue of the Valiant series that Ditko drew back in 1992, with the 21-page story "The Power Trip".  Ditko is credited with the co-plot and pencils, while Bob Wiacek is credited as "finisher and inker".

It's a pretty basic story.  At the end of the previous issue Solar has accidentally given a portion of his powers to a man named Bender, who goes a bit crazy with the powers, so Solar has to deal with that in addition to various personal issues like his employer shutting down and disagreements with his girlfriend.

Not a huge amount to recommend this if you're not into the history of Solar.  I thought the inking by Wiacek had a few interesting bits, for the most part the Ditko style of the era comes through, but sometimes it's overwhelmed, presumably those bits where Waicek was more of a "finisher".

Solar, Man of the Atom #11 [1992]

Ditko is credited with breakdowns for the 22-page story "Justifiable Homicides" in this early Valiant comic reviving the old 1960s Gold Key character. Ted Halsted does the finished pencils, and Golzalo Mayo inks, so you can imagine with that many hands in the art not a huge amount of the Ditko comes through, but there are a few spots where it does, and the overall storytelling is clear.

The story is all in the middle of some longer tale, so it isn't really that clear to someone not reading the whole series.  You have Solar, who apparently got turned into living energy in an accident, being attacked by a bunch of not very interesting young kids with names like Fort, Jolt, Sponge and Rock, who have been misled by someone named Harada into thinking Solar is a menace.  He's defended by someone named Gilad (the Eternal Warrior, I think), who has a history with Harada.  Most of the issue is taken up with that fight, which ends with a dramatic phone call, and then there's the set-up for some sort of crossover which took up the next two (non-Ditko) issues of the title.

Ditko was doing some decent work around this time, but Valiant really didn't seem to know what to do with him, and tended to bury his work with some lackluster inking, with a few exceptions. The stuff's worth checking out, but I'd probably recommend his issues of MAGNUS before this.

Battlemania #5 [1992]

This is the final issue of Valiant's licensed WWF wrestling comic, Ditko having drawn one of the two stories for every issue. In this case, "Justice For All" is a 20-page story featuring Sid Justice, a good-natured farm-boy type, going up against the vile Jake "The Snake" Roberts. Laura Hitchcock writes and Charles Barnett III inks.

The story opens with Justice settling down for some milk and catching up on the Arkansas Farm Journal. His apartment is pretty funny in the opening page, with a butter churn, some gardening equipment, a basket of vegetables, a bookcase with a gaslamp, what appears to be a lot of moonshine, various models of farm equipment and animals, some family photos and for some reason a TARDIS model (okay, a police box, but I don't think they actually make models of those that aren't tied-in to Doctor Who, and I don't think they have them in rural Arkansas). Anyway, his housekeeper opens a package, which turns out to be a cobra, which Justice makes short work of. Since his housekeeper broke her glasses in the commotion, and refuses to accept a handout from Justice to pay for them, Justice goes to get the money from the man logically responsible, Jake "The Snake" Roberts.

The resulting quest for remuneration takes Justice to battles with The Snake at the gym, a rooftop (with, hey, a water-tower!), the streets and finally the snakehouse at the zoo before justice finally prevails.

This is surprisingly good, maybe the best of Ditko's BATTLEMANIA stories. The faces lack a certain Ditko-ness, presumably to keep them on-model to the actual wrestlers, but the body language is all there, the story structure follows the classic Marvel formula that Ditko had a hand in defining, "The Snake" is very much shown as a Ditko villain in the style of Kraven, and the fights in the various locales are very well done, especially the rooftop and the zoo. Not a masterpiece by any means, but you could do far worse in looking to sample Ditko's late-period for-hire work.

Battlemania #4 [1991]

A short-lived part of Valiant's initial launch was its marketing relationship with the World Wrestling Federation, including this series of magazines, which seems to largely exist as a vehicle for the 12-page catalog of schlock in the middle. Surrounding that are two long stories, the first of which is the 20-page "Pain Or Peace", pencilled by Ditko, inked by Don Perlin and written by Jim Shooter.

I never was much of a wrestling fan, but picked up far more than I cared to about it through hanging around with people who were. I'm not quite clear from this story if the set-up is that the "characters" are real and this is their life outside the ring or if it casts the characters in other roles. In this story the Big Boss Man (a police officer), is waiting in a van using some major monitoring equipment on a house newly bought by the Undertaker and his manager Paul Bearer, convinced they're up to no good. He's joined by a kid delivering pizza, and they monitor as Mrs. Goodheart enters the house as part of the welcome wagon. What follows are a bunch of suspicious events and comments that are always on the edge of threats to Mrs. Goodheart or hints of cannibalism, but not quite enough to meet the Big Boss Man's standard of probable cause. Finally, of course, it goes too far (and I'm sure the badgering of the pizza delivery boy questioning his manhood didn't help), and there's a brief fight (which is a nice throwback to classic Ditko fight choreography), which leads to the Big Boss Man crashing a funeral. Apparently his high tech surveillance gear missed the arrival of a funeral procession. On the other hand, the ending seems to confirm that there is cannibalism going on.

Yeah, this wasn't that good. The inking is kind of heavy, but there are a few solid bits of Ditko when you get away from the faces of the wrestlers.

Anyone know if any of the other Ditko drawn WWF stories are worth getting?

This story and others also appeared as part of some one-shot specials, like this.

Magnus Robot Fighter #18 [1992]

Ditko briefly worked for Valiant in their early days, first on some of their BATTLEMANIA books about WWF wrestlers and then on their super-hero line, doing pencils or breakdowns on seven issues of four different titles published in a six month period. I suppose if things worked differently he might have settled in for a long run at the company, but right about then Jim Shooter was gone and Ditko's work stopped appearing at Valiant.

This was the first of two issues of MAGNUS that Ditko pencilled, and he's also credited with co-plotting it. I never read the previous issues, so I don't entirely know the set-up or what's going on, but there are robots, and Magnus fights them, so all is right in the world (robots seem surprisingly common in Ditko's work, with Machine Man, Rom, a few Spider-Man villains, Robot Wars, Go-Bots, etc). "Inside The Metal Mind" has Magnus living somewhere called Goph Level, in need of some money, so he takes a job which ends up involving fighting robots. Meanwhile, some robots who have developed free will are also experimenting with bodies that mimic humans, and their leader E7, a top-hat wearing robot, is trying to find out how to create more robots with free will.

It's a bit silly, but actually not that bad, and Ditko's art works pretty well with the various robots (though nothing can make E7 look less than ridiculous).

Ralph Reese inks the 22-page story. The cover also appears to be Ditko/Reese, although Reese's inks seem even heavier there.