Steve Ditko - Early Life

Early Life

Stephen J. Ditko was born in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, the son of first-generation Americans of Slovak descent: Stephen Ditko, an artistically talented master carpenter at a steel mill, and Anna, a homemaker. The second-eldest child in a working-class family, he was preceded by sister Anna Marie and followed in uncertain order by sister Betty and brother Patrick. Inspired by his father's love of newspaper comic strips, particularly Hal Foster's Prince Valiant, Ditko found his interest in comics accelerated by the introduction of superhero Batman in 1940, and by Will Eisner's The Spirit, which appeared in a tabloid-sized comic-book insert in Sunday newspapers.

Good with his hands, Ditko in junior high school was part of a group of students who crafted wooden models of German airplanes to aid civilian World War II aircraft-spotters. Upon graduating from Johnstown High School in 1945, he enlisted in the U.S. Army on October 26, 1945, and did military service in postwar Germany, where he drew comics for an Army newspaper.

Following his discharge, Ditko learned that his idol, Batman artist Jerry Robinson, was teaching at the Cartoonists and Illustrators School (later the School of Visual Arts) in New York City. Moving there in 1950, he enrolled in the art school under the G.I. Bill. Robinson found the young student "a very hard worker who really focused on his drawing" and someone who "could work well with other writers as well as write his own stories and create his own characters", and he helped Ditko acquire a scholarship for the following year. "He was in my class for two years, four or five days a week, five hours a night. It was very intense." Robinson, who invited artists and editors to speak with his class, once brought in Stan Lee, then editor of Marvel Comics' 1950s precursor, Atlas Comics, and, "I think that was when Stan first saw Steve's work."