RETRO REVIEW: Ditko Monsters: Gorgo!
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IDW Publishing; $34.99
The presence of Steve Ditko’s glorious work in several volumes of the Creepy Archives (and their Ditko-centric collection) has made us take new note of old, non-superhero work by the co-creator of Spider-Man and Doctor Strange, and that in turn brought us to the recently released Ditko Monsters: Gorgo! from IDW Publishing’s Yoe Books imprint.
What a treasure this one is! From Craig Yoe’s informative and context-building introductory essay to the work itself, Gorgo is something that even many hardcore Ditko fans might have overlooked… but they shouldn’t.
Many of us were aware that writer Joe Gill and Steve Ditko crafted the 22-page adaptation of the cheesy-but-beloved 1961 feature film that led off the series, but we were sadly among the uninformed when it came to how many other issues Ditko worked on. As it turns out, it’s enough to fill a book.
Of course since Gorgo was published by Charlton, the coloring and production were horrible, but those defects can’t overpower his storytelling. His unique brand of storytelling, frequently both personal and dramatic, adjusts amazingly well as it moves from close-up panels with normal people to splash pages with giant monsters.
Our thanks to Craig Yoe, the Yoe Books team and our friends at IDW for putting together this missing bit of comics and monster history.
– J.C. Vaughn
