« … but the rain is full of ghosts tonight » — Edna St. Vincent Millay*
Well, I made it through another countdown. Thanks for your interest and support!
In the proper spirit of the thing, I’ve indulged and reserved my very favourite Hallowe’en treat for last, and that’s a Joe Gill–Steve Ditko chiller — for the second consecutive year!
I’ve always adored this one for its adroit juggling of hushed atmosphere and giggles, its casually dropped hints and layered subtlety. Ditko really had no peer when it came to insinuating his narrator into the visual tapestry. In this case, his first and finest host, Mr. L. Dedd (or I. M. Dedd, depending on the source). Ditko is clearly having a ball.
Unless I’m mistaken, Steve Ditko always inked himself (and sometimes gloriously inked Kirby) until 1964, when George Roussos as ‘George Bell‘ (seemingly using the wrong end of the brush, sorry) inked Ditko’s pencils on a trio of early Doctor Strange episodes (Strange Tales nos. 123-125, if you must know).
Even while working at Marvel, Ditko (wisely) kept working for Charlton. At his busiest, he was assigned an inker on a revival of Captain Atom, Rocco ‘Rocke’ Mastroserio, and the combination bore splendid fruit. Ditko was one of those cartoonists who laid down the basics in the pencils, then had most of his fun in fleshing them out in ink. Finishing Ditko’s layouts wasn’t a task just any Joe could handle, as the ensuing years would bear out.
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And so we’re done, countdown-wise, for another year. If that’s not quite sufficient to slake your loathsome lust, promenade yourself through our bloated-by-now archives, at this point two hundred and seventeen posts strong :
Wishing you all a hair-raising Hallowe’en — thanks for all the creepy loitering!
-RG
*did I imagine that someone (David Mamet?) once said that her name sounded like ‘a bowling ball tumbling down the stairs’? It may have been meant as a compliment.
Who's Out There? 
I’m with you. Rocco Mastroserio is my second favorite Ditko inker after Ditko himself. He brought something to the table without dominating the pencils, kinda like Joe Sinnott inking over Jack Kirby. I do like the Wally Wood/Steve Ditko collaborations at Tower, but I consider those Ditko pencilling for Wood rather than Wood inking for Ditko. I’m not entirely satisfied with the latter as happened in the seventies at DC with things like Stalker. Swinging back to Mastroserio, I also think he was an effective inker over Pat Boyette on the couple of stories they did for Warren.
By the way, I really like the way Ditko handled the ghost hosts at Charlton in the sixities where they visually inhabit the space of the stories while the other characters pay them no mind. It’s not something the GhouLunatics did at EC where their interjections were cutaways from the action. There is a precedent in TV’s Twilight Zone where Rod Serling would wander on set, but that was only for intros and outros. I’m less enthused with how Ditko handled things in the seventies where the hosts got their own panels for posing in, with Winnie the Witch prancing around being a distinct disfavorite. [This is where I acknowledge I’ve used a lot of ‘where’s.]
Thanks to you both for all the fine Halloween posts. Much appreciated. Many of them sent me tracking down stuff on elsewhere on the internet, though that’s true in general for your blog, not just this month. Happy Halloween.
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