Mysterious Travelers

Steve Ditko (1927-2018) is one of the most important contributors to American comic books. As the cocreator of Spider-Man and sole creator of Doctor Strange Ditko made an indelible mark on American popular culture. Mysterious Travelers: Steve Ditko and the Search for a New Liberal Identity resets the conversation about his heady and powerful work. Always inward facing Ditko's narratives employed superhero and supernatural fantasy in the service of self-examination and with characters like the Question Mr. A and Static Ditko turned ordinary superhero comics into philosophic treatises. Many of Ditko's philosophy-driven comics show a clear debt to ideas found in Ayn Rand's Objectivism. Unfortunately readers often reduce Ditko's work to a mouthpiece for Rand's vision. Mysterious Travelers unsettles this notion. <p/> In this book Zack Kruse argues that Ditko's philosophy draws on a complicated network of ideas that is best understood as mystic liberalism. Although Ditko is not the originator of mystic liberalism his comics provide a unique window into how such an ideology operates in popular media. Examining selections of Ditko's output from 1953 to 1986 Kruse demonstrates how Ditko's comics provide insight into a unique strand of American thought that has had a lasting impact.