Writers: Steve Ditko and D.C. Glanzman Artists: Ditko and Rocke Masterioso
Plot: Vic Sage is a television commentator by day, a vigilante known as the Question by night. When he discovers that businessman Jason Ord is in cahoots with racketeer Max Kroe. Sage refuses to accept sponsorship from Ord, which causes Ord to orchestrate with Kroe a smear campaign against Sage. Little do they know that they are dealing with…the question.
While I'm at the ripe old age of 22, I still have quite a fondness for the writers and artists who did work in the Silver Age, if not so much for the era itself. Gil Kane, for example, was one of my favorite artists whether he was doing Superman or Edge. Another favorite of mine is Steve Ditko, who, like Kane, tried to break out of the boundaries of corporate superhero comics and go about his own path. Ditko has done many various comics, including his co-creations Spider-Man and Dr. Strange, and who could forget the lovable little scamp they called Speedball? From Chuck Norris and his Karate Kommandos to Machine Man, Ditko has gotten around, but only in work where he's had creative control has he really been able to flourish as an artist and espouse his unique philosophy on the world. The Question, created by Ditko for Charlton Comics in 1967 (in the pages of Blue Beetle), was the first step towards a more mature, thoughtful, Ditkovian hero.
Frank Miller recently announced that in the The Dark Knight Strikes Back, his version of the Question will harken back to the "Randian" point of view, as opposed to the later interpretations by Denny O'Neil. Curious about this, I picked up the new Millennium Edition of Mysterious Suspense #1, which at $2.50 is, well, a lot more than the one-shot cost back in 1968. However, this introduction to the character isn't really worth your trouble, and not because I disagree with what Ditko's saying, and maybe I'm in too big a "screw the Silver Age" mode, but I found little entertainment in this foil-stamped reprint.
The chief problem is that this is the Question's solo debut, not his first appearance. The first page (a splash pinup by Rocke Masterioso; the rest of the issue's art is by Ditko) announces. "We're back, readers!" Uh…back from where? The story is written with the assumption that the reader knows who Vic Sage is and who the supporting players are. Why, I wonder, did DC publish this rather than the Question's first appearance? It wasn't too difficult to grasp things at all, but I still felt that I was coming in late and had missed something. Not that Sage and his supporting cast are very interesting; all the characters are mouthpieces for Ditko's point of view, they discuss things in Ditkovian terms rather than speak in dialogue regular humans would speak. Sage himself is appropriately noble, and folks like Ord and Kroe are appropriately evil, but the whole conflict feels very staid and cliched. D.C. Glanzman's dialogue reads more like, well, Ditko actually wrote it, only he's not as word-heavy and expository these days.
Part of the reason is that this is one of the ugliest looking Ditko comics I've ever seen. Ditko drew the whole thing in a nine-panel grid, and the panels are irritatingly compact, cramming too many close-ups into one panel. When Sage dons his Question costume, it's thankfully in a splash page. The story as a whole seems very confined and doesn't have the vibrancy of Ditko's Spider-Man work or more recent comics like Strange Avenging Tales. The lettering is not very easy on the eyes, nor is the coloring.
Gary Groth once termed Ditko as "brainwashed by Rand" and that's an assessment with which I cannot disagree. He has a very rigid, black-and-white view of things, yet he triumphs objectivity over shades of gray. "What Makes a Hero?" is a very rigid, black-and-white story, and just isn't any fun. Ditko's position hasn't changed in the past few decades, but he's gotten tougher, angrier, and more dramatic, most recently seen in Steve Ditko's 32 Page Package. Ditko would probably prefer you check out that wildly entertaining collection of "Tsk! Tsk!" strips than read this book, which was a first, forgettable, step in Ditko's journey as an artist.
