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" ... And They're Not
Half Bad!"
A DISTANT THIRD: The Charlton Comics Gang
PART ONE: DITKO'S The Blue Beetle AND THE QUESTION
The coloring was frequently cheesy, and off-register (take another look at the "house ad," gracing the top of this very page). The lettering uniformly looked as if it'd arrived onto the page by way of Tyco's "My Very First Typewriter." The paper stock, itself, boasted much the same sort of tactile consistency as, say, moist Kleenex tissues. And -- of course -- the friggin' things were so poorly distributed, nation-wide, in the first place that attempting to track down two consecutive issues of damned near any of the Charlton Comics titles was roughly akin, in general overall difficulty, to nailing an egg to the wall.
Didn't matter. Didn't matter. Steve Ditko -- the Steve Ditko; best- goldurned-SPIDER-MAN-artist- who-ever-bloody-lived Steve Ditko -- was the artist of record for THE BLUE BEETLE (and the back-up feature for same: The Question), as well as SPACE ADVENTURES (featuring a gent by the name of Captain Atom).
I repeat: nothing else really mattered, so long as that much, at least, was still the artistic "given."
Oh, yes: he was just exactly that damned good at what he did,
was the illustrious Mr. Ditko. 
Seeing as how two of the aforementioned heroes, in particular, were
so radically re-worked (both in conceptualization and eventual
execution) from their initial baseline premises... a closer look at the
pair in their respective "salad days" might well prove reasonably instructive,
here.
As initially conceived, the Silver Age Blue Beetle (not to be confused, of course, with his namesake and predecessor: the original Golden Age "Blue Beetle") was -- in actuality -- the brilliant (and decidedly eccentric, truth to tell) technological "boy genius" Ted Kord.
Like any other nice, normal, two- fisted comic book laboratory whiz,
young Ted indulged himself in the odd "hobby" or two during his "off"
hours. One of these (in proper four-color fashion) was obsessing
endlessly over his doomed romantic relationship (such as it was) with
beauteous research assistant Tracey [see above]; the other,
of course, involved tarting himself up in the guise of a giant blue buggie-man,
and hurtling himself headlong against various appallingly low rent costumed
super-baddies, and suchlike. Only in the funny books, folks.
In truth: the actual stories utilized in explicating these mental aberrations-in-miniature were only so-so affairs, at best.; nothing which couldn't be obtained just as cheaply (and to better storytelling effect) in practically any mainstream Marvel or DC title of the day. As mentioned previously: the real selling point to the various Ditko-driven CHARLTON offerings was the loopy, wildly idiosyncratic and design- oriented artwork of The Big Man himself.
So unwavering and bedrock solid was the man's artistic craftsmanship, that not even the grotesquely inferior printing process preferred by Charlton for its comics (unlike its better-known four-color competitors, the company utilized the same cheap, throwaway plastic printing plates used for mass production of cereal boxes, rather than the more common [and expensive] metal ones. Hence, the characteristic "fuzziness" of the standard 60's Charlton comic.)
DC Comics obtained the rights to the entire stable of Charlton super-heroes in the early '80's, after the venerable (ifcheapjack, nonetheless) publisher had finally folded its comics- publishing "tents" for good and for all. A reasonably workmanlike attempt was made to incorporate the inherently insouciant Beetle into the DC universe proper, by means of both ongoing solo title and a coveted membership "berth" within the ranks of the more prestigious JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA comic.
The latter, however, ultimately worked to the decided disadvantage of the former, as the character was unceremoniously transformed into such a colossal and overbearing buffoon (the better to perpetuate the tiresome "team hijinks" of the JLA title) that the readership of the period was no longer able to sustain the necessary "suspension of disbelief" requisite to being able to take Ted Kord seriously within the pages of his own series, in turn.
The Blue Beetle, as of this writing, is on something of a prolonged "hiatus," as DC allows the mass memories of the readership (eventually; with any luck at all) to forget -- or, at least, forgive -- the manifold indignities suffered by the character at the shaky artistic "hands" of his own (putative) Boswells. One may only hold fast to the hope devout that his eventual return to "active" status, comics-wise, will be orchestrated by someone with an appreciably more simpatico "take" on the character, overall.
More successfully integrated into the everyday workings of the DC milieu, on the other hand, was the bleak, Ayn Rand-ian philosopher- cum-detective known, simply, as The Question. [See panel reproduction, accompanying]
The crusading television journalist Vic Sage -- whose all-but-insatiable compulsion, re: the relentless ferreting-out of T*H*E* *T*R*U*T*H* (be it either in the service of solving some particularly labyrinthine murder mystery, or else the somewhat larger, thornier issues of What Is "Good"; What Is "Evil"; What Is "Free Will"; and "I Wonder Wonder Wonder, ooo-ooo-ooooh/ Who Wrote the Book of Looooove...?") provided him with a unique and indefinably appealing sort of storytelling cachet -- enjoyed the incalculable good fortune of having his DC Comics solo title spearheaded by two of the most prodigious talents the industry had (and has yet) to offer: legendary BATMAN and GREEN LANTERN/GREEN ARROW scripter Dennis O'Neil, and Milestone Comics penciling superstar Denys Cowan.
Without intending any sort of "slight" whatsoever towards any/everyone
who ever drew a company paycheck while laboring on behalf of DC's BLUE
BEETLE title: that is one gargantuan, Godzilla-sized difference,
right there.
There remains, however, a vast and all-but-unbridgeable chasm of dissenting opinion amidst hard core "junkies," re: the Question character (the ranks of said fanboy "militia," incidentally, in which Your Humble Narrator and Host is demonstrably pleased and proud to be counted as one of the more, ummmmm, aggressive infantrymen), and the (admittedly) radical "reworking" afforded him at the creative behest of O'Neil and Cowan, Inc.
As interpreted by these two worthies, the somewhat unrelievedly black-and-white worldview of "Vic Sage" (which had always, upto that juncture, mirrored precisely the equally extreme "my-way-or-the- highway" Libertarian mindset of his creator, the estimable Mr. Ditko) was replaced with a more I-Still- Haven't-Found- What-I'm- Looking-For, "zen"-like zeitgeist. Gone, gone was the unblinking stone certainty, in other words, that "the Question" already had all of the answers neatly tucked away somewhere within the pockets and lining of his trademarked trenchcoat.
If (on the one hand) we are to judge such things, ultimately, in the harsh (and unforgiving) light of Creator's Original Intent -- which is, I hasten to add, not only a perfectly valid approach to such appraisals, overall, but one of which Yours Truly is a staunch and unregenerate advocate -- then the final judgment, surely, must be: O'Neil and Cowan did, indeed, Take Monstrous Liberties with the character of Vic Sage; no question.
However -- and you might as well make ready those retaliatory thunderbolts Right Here, Right Now, O Lord; I blaspheme freely, in this particular, and of my own conscious volition -- if we accord ultimate weight to which interpretation of any given character makes, ultimately, for the better read of the two... then even as hidebound and unflinching a Silver Age apologist as My Widdle Self is forced to concede it: the O'Neil/Cowan series was, by far, the more literate; involving; and (ultimately) rewarding one, overall.
Even if you know and I know that the curmudgeonly Steve Ditko would, undoubtedly, have abhorred the more "everything is relative, really" (quasi-)political "leanings" of the DC series, in toto... I dare venture this much, as accompanying ameliorative: the man was -- at day's end -- the consummate comics professional.
As such: I think even he, in turn, might well have appreciated the overall craftsmanship and conscience with which his "signature" non-Marvel Comics character was handled, in his absence...
... even if the end result, finally, leaned rather more heavily on prose stylings than it did on pallid polemic.
It's all about storytelling, after all. In the final analysis, I mean.
I'm just sayin', here, is all.
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