Okay, I made that up. But I’m sure anyone nerdy enough to hang out here at Atomic Junk Shop knows Steve Ditko was a devout admirer of Ayn Rand’s Objectivist philosophy.
If I’d been reading Marvel in the Silver Age, I wouldn’t have guessed. Ayn Rand literally preached the virtue of selfishness: only losers feel any need to help people for fre. Brilliant surgeon Stephen Strange refusing to donate his skills when patients can’t pay, Peter Parker not stopping a thief who runs past him — from a Randian perspective, those are heroic stances. Yet in both cases, Peter and Stephen are in the wrong — they have to learn that helping others, caring about others is the way to go. It’s quite possible Stan Lee came up with that side of the heroes, but Ditko was apparently okay with it. I mean, he co-plotted Dr. Strange for years and Strange’s raison d’etre is to serve others by protecting them with his magic.
The only one time I spot some Ayn Rand shining through is when Jonah expresses one of the themes of Rand’s The Fountainhead: lesser men, knowing how great men show them up as inferior, must inevitably try to destroy them.
Nor do I see much Objectivism in his DC work on the Creeper or Hawk and Dove. In between Marvel and DC, however, he introduced his Objectivist Avenger, Mr. A, in a fanzine.
And then came Blue Beetle #5, released by Charlton in 1968. That’s several years behind where I am in my Silver Age Reread; unfortunately, as it came out a year after #4, I forgot to look for it on the DC app. And then, recently, I remembered.
“Faces the Destroyer of Heroes” (plotted and drawn by Ditko; David Glanzman gets credit for scripting but I’ve read that it was Ditko all the way) is full of Objectivist themes. Obnoxious, preening intellectuals who sneer at human accomplishment and express their contempt in art (in case you’re wondering, The Charlton Companion says Charlton simply typed up the letters on the comics page rather than pay for professional lettering)
Weak minds embrace the nihilist despair of “Our Man.” Ted and guest-star Vic Sage marvel at human greatness
The sad-looking guy in the panels above decides dressing up as Our Man will be a way to convey the futility of struggling to achieve anything.
Kids These Days are delighted!
Does that Ditko guy understand youth, or what?
If you’re worried Our Man will plunge the world into moral decline, you can relax. Blue Beetle takes him down; in the backup, the Question deals with that overbearing art critic.
Nothing about this story makes me think “Wow, Ditko should really have fought harder to get his personal philosophy into more of his Big Two stuff!
