It’s obvious to pop-culture or comic book fans from the book’s title, Along Came A Radioactive Spider, that Spider-Man is central to the plot of the story. The book’s subtitle, Strange Steve Ditko and the Creation of Spider-Man, fills in some of the blanks and might introduce some elementary school-age readers to the other man behind the spider. He was the peanut butter to Stan Lee’s chocolate and the man who helmed the illustrated manifestation of Spider-Man, Steve Ditko. This illustrated book moves with the same kinetic energy as a great comic book in presenting the strange aspect of how Ditko was perceived and his impact on the publishing world.
Along Came A Radioactive Spider is the literary sibling to With Great Power: The Marvelous Stan Lee. That was an illustrated book that we really enjoyed and this book is cut from the same cloth. Both books are unauthorized biographies but swing close enough to the well-known truth to be a great introductory source for elementary-aged readers who know about everyone’s favorite webhead or other classic Ditko creations.
The first thing that readers will recognize is that the art in Along Came A Radioactive Spider zips and plays without boundaries. The webs from Spider-Man cross from left to right, a foot might sneak over just a bit from one to another and the myriad of strange villains will occupy 70% of the two pages, leaving just a bit of white space for some text. Old-school comic book fans will also be struck by the fact that the colored illustrations were created, for lack of a better term, using tiny colored dots to provide an old-school effect. It’s refreshing to see that style as it’s reminiscent of way in which Ditko’s original art appeared in the comic books.
When Steve Ditko was emerging as an artist, the style was heroic and straightforward. Stan Lee and Jack Kirby were the main names in comic book story art and they had a great thing going. It was Ditko’s job to illustrate the stories that Lee sent on to him. He’d draw from different perspectives and had a way that was a bit more left-of-center than Kirby. The recurring word in Along Came A Radioactive Spider is ‘strange’.
‘Strange’ may not be the operative word when people think about Spider-Man today, but that’s simply because he’s part of the cultural landscape. When Spiderman was first presented to Ditko as a character in Amazing Fantasy he was a boy with a magic ring that would transform him into Spiderman, note the absence of the hyphen. The original version was an adult superhero, thus the entire character seemed more like a rip-off of Shazaham!, than a new creation. Ditko tweaked the character. He made him a normal teenage boy, albeit one who was bitten by a radioactive spider. Peter Parker was given a sense of humor and the normal frustrations that a student in high school would have.
Ditko’s version of Spider-Man was a huge hit and spun off its own series, of which he drew and wrote 33 issues. It was a couple of years after that happened that he created Doctor Strange. Shortly after that creation, he left Marvel Comics and led a reclusive life where his reluctance to meet with fans became as famous as his comic creations.
Along Came A Radioactive Spider is an illustrated book that’s immediately attractive to young readers. Presuming that they know nothing about Spider-Man the art will still draw them in. It’s curious and has movement in every panel, from the pencil popping out of Ditko’s hand to the multitudes of Spidey’s villains trying to capture him. The story is presented in a way that will allow readers to come away with the disparate personalities that were working together, yet had different ways of getting things done. Working together with people who don’t think or act like you is a lesson that elementary school kids learn, and keep trying to master all the way through their education. The fact that Along Came A Radioactive Spider illustrates this lesson in a non-fiction, pop culture-centric way is just a bonus that will allow more readers to follow the journey.
Along Came A Radioactive Spider: Strange Steve Ditko and the Creation of Spider-Man is by Annie Hunter Eriksen with illustrations by Lee Gatlin and is available on Page Street Kids.
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