Stalker No. 1 Cover by Steve Ditko and Wally Wood

Another of DC’s short-run comics of the 1970s, this one boasted young Paul Levitz early in his career as writer, with veterans Steve Ditko and Wally Wood on art duties. Despite the quality of Stalker, it lasted only four issues.

I’ve always liked the illustration for the cover of No. 1, but for the colouring done then the idea of making the hero and the skull stand out meant disregarding how the villain’s looming shadow would affect the scene, and the skull on the wall ended up feeling like part of the logo. Finally, putting the logo behind the shadow and skull challenges the physics of the scene as drawn where those pieces should fall into the background.

So we have a very different colour and scene interpretation with this one in 2021 versus the original from 1975.

Stalker was reprinted in The Steve Ditko Omnibus, Volume Two a few years back. It’d be nice to see the series continued at some point.

As published.

House ad.

Original art scan from Heritage Auctions.

Made production ready. Trade dress removed and missing art bits drawn in.

New colour version.

Re-created trade dress added.