CBA: Do you recall The Question?
Alan: Yes, I do. That was another very interesting character, and it was almost a pure Steve Ditko character, in that it was odd-looking. “The Question” didn’t look like any other super-hero on the market, and it also seemed to be a kind of mainstream comics version of Steve Ditko’s far more radical “Mr. A,” from witzend. I remember at the time—this would’ve been when I was just starting to get involved in British comics fandom—there was a British fanzine that was published over here by a gentleman called Stan Nichols (who has since gone to write a number of fantasy books). In Stan’s fanzine, Stardock, there was an article called “Propaganda, or Why the Blue Beetle Voted for George Wallace.” [laughter] This was the late-’60s, and British comics fandom had quite a strong hippie element. Despite the fact that Steve Ditko was obviously a hero to the hippies with his psychedelic “Dr. Strange” work and for the teen angst of Spider-Man, Ditko’s politics were obviously very different from those fans. His views were apparent through his portrayals of Mr. A and the protesters or beatniks that occasionally surfaced in his other work. I think this article was the first to actually point out that, yes, Steve Ditko did have a very right-wing agenda (which of course, he’s completely entitled to), but at the time, it was quite interesting, and that probably led to me portraying [Watchmen character] Rorschach as an extremely right-wing character.

CBA: When you read some of Ditko’s diatribes in “The Question” and in some issues of Blue Beetle, did you read it with bemusement or disgust?
Alan: Well...

CBA: A mix of both?
Alan: Well, no. I can look at Salvador Dali’s work and marvel at it, despite the fact that I believe that Dali was probably a completely disgusting human being [laughter] and borderline fascist, but that doesn’t detract from the genius of his artwork. With Steve Ditko, I at least felt that though Steve Ditko’s political agenda was very different to mine, Steve Ditko had a political agenda, and that in some ways set him above most of his contemporaries. During the ’60s, I learned pretty quickly about the sources of Steve Ditko’s ideas, and I realized very early on that he was very fond of the writing of Ayn Rand. CBA: Did you explore her philosophy? Alan: I had to look at The Fountainhead. I have to say I found Ayn Rand’s philosophy laughable. It was a “white supremacist dreams of the master race,” burnt in an early-20th century form. Her ideas didn’t really appeal to me, but they seemed to be the kind of ideas that people would espouse, people who might secretly believe themselves to be part of the elite, and not part of the excluded majority. I would basically disagree with all of Ditko’s ideas, but he has to be given credit for expressing these political ideas. I believe some feminists regard Dave Sim in much the same light; they might disagree with everything he says, but at least there is some sort of sexual-political debate going on there. So I’ve got respect for Ditko.

A few years ago, I was in a local rock band called “The Emperors of Ice Cream, ”and one of our numbers that always went down very well live, was a thing called, “Mr. A.” The beat and the tune of it were completely stolen from “Sister Ray” by the Velvet Underground, but the lyrics were all about Steve Ditko.

CBA: “Right/wrong, black/white”? [laughter] Alan: One of the verses was, “He takes a card and shades one-half of it in dark, so he can demonstrate to you just what he means/He says, ‘There’s wrong and there’s right, there’s black and there’s white, and there is nothing, nothing in-between.’ That’s what Mr. A says.” [laughter] And then we’d go into the chorus. Yeah, it was a Velvet Underground thrash, but with lyrics about Steve Ditko, which were very sympathetic, because at that time, I’d heard that Steve Ditko was pretty much harmless, living at the YMCA or something like that. This was, I think, during Spider-Man’s anniversary year, and I thought that was criminal.

Steve Ditko is completely at the other end of the political spectrum from me. I wouldn’t say that I was far left in terms of Communism, but I am an anarchist, which is 180° away from Steve Ditko’s position. But I have a great deal of respect for the man, and certainly respect for his artwork, and the fact that there’s something about his uncompromising attitude that I have a great deal of sympathy with. It’s just that the things I wouldn’t compromise about or that he wouldn’t compromise about are probably very different.

Even if they have morals you don’t agree with, a person with strong moral code is a person who has a big advantage in today’s world. Check out the TwoMorrows publishing website for more info!