The Daily Comic Book Coffee, number 38: I’m glad I located a coffee-drinking page drawn by the legendary Steve Ditko. This is from the story “Partners” written by the prolific Joe Gill from Ghostly Haunts #29, published by Charlton Comics with a January 1973 cover date.“Partners” is the tale of prospectors Max Aarens and Henry Farr. As the story opens Max and Henry are in the Northern Canadian wilderness, sitting by the camp fire drinking coffee as they celebrate having struck gold. Unfortunately greed & paranoia soon descend, and each man makes plans to betray the other.
Ditko utilizes some extremely effective layouts on this story, superbly illustrating both the brutal blizzard and the psychological trauma that strikes the characters. The facial expressions & body language of his characters is incredibly evocative. Even here, on the relatively quiet first page, Ditko deftly establishes the mood of harshly cold isolation, and foreshadows the treacherous nature of the protagonists.
By the way, the lady in green & red on the left side of the opening splash panel is Winnie the Witch, the lovely host of Ghostly Haunts. As he often did on the Ghostly Haunts stories he drew, Ditko has Winnie lurking in-between panels and on the borders of pages of “Partners,” knowingly observing the unfolding events.
I originally read this in black & white in Steve Ditko’s 160-Page Package published by Robin Synder in 1999, which collected 20 of the Ditko-illustrated stories from the various Charlton horror anthologies. It looks really crisp & effective in black & white. There are scans of the full story in color from Ghostly Haunts #29 on the blog Destination Nightmare.
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