Given his emphatic philosophical views, I’m a little surprised Steve Ditko didn’t call his new superhero the Answer. But instead, in Blue Beetle 1 (June 1967), Ditko went with the Question as a backup character.
Weirdness and an air of mystery were two of Ditko’s strong suits, and the Question combined both in name, concept and design.
Vic Sage — whose name suggests both triumph and wisdom — is an uncompromising, crusading newscaster who punctuates his exposés with secret crime-fighting raids as the shadowy Question.
Using Prof. Rodor’s inventions, Sage is able to safeguard his identity by instantly transforming back and forth. A blank-faced mask, retrieved from his belt buckle, can be cemented in place by a cloud of yellow gas that also alters the color of his pre-treated business attire.
Readers might well have been reminded of the Crime-Master, a 1965 Ditko Spider-Man villain who also sported a business suit, fedora and full face mask.
Such vacantly visaged figures were something of a Ditko trademark. The Ghost, a Captain Atom villain appearing simultaneously with the Question, wore a featureless white full face mask. Even Ditko’s most famous co-creation, Spider-Man, had a full face mask with big, eerie-looking blank eyes.
In addition to such blank-faced characters, Ditko had an affinity for figures in flight, and he indulged both in creating the Question’s second opponent, the Banshee (Blue Beetle 2, Aug. 1967).
Flying humans were already old hat in other superhero comics by the time Ditko started his professional work. But Ditko seemed interested in exploring both the inherent visual appeal of the concept and the storytelling angles he could work out for it. A flying man might rob a penthouse or even an aircraft, for example.
One of Spider-Man’s earliest foes had been the Vulture, and Ditko refined the idea here with an even more striking visual design.
After a circus performer perfects a multi-chambered “flying cape” using helium, his assistant kills him and steals it, embarking on a nationwide crime spree as the green-clad Banshee. Vic Sage tackles him, first as himself and then as the Question.
“Yes, for murdering a man better than he was, for destroying a rare inventive mind, for stealing and corrupting a work of art, I want him very badly!” Sage says, revealing his Ayn Randite motivations.
Despite his earthbound disadvantages, the Question prevails when a storm blows the helpless Banshee out to sea.
Former Charlton Editor-in-Chief Dick Giordano described the Question as “…a harder-edged hero whose actions in an early story allowed a bad guy to drown in a sewer — something that unleashed a flood of mail to Charlton. That just wasn’t done in those days! I didn’t see it as a big deal, but I was obviously in the minority. By today’s standards, no one would even blink!”
The Question was designed to fit neatly into Giordano’s Action Heroes line. With the exception of Captain Atom, who was grandfathered in, Charlton’s new heroes were meant to substitute training and special equipment for super powers.
The Creeper, a hero Ditko created for DC in 1968, would be a variation on the Question theme — this time with modest super powers induced by inventions provided by yet another helpful professor.
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