Libertarian Funny Pages

Damon W. Root | July 25, 2008

Entertainment Weekly gives a thumbs up to the new coffee table biography of Spider-Man co-creator and Ayn Rand fanatic Steve Ditko, calling the artist's life "one of the strangest comic-book tales ever: not just how a talented man was ripped off by others, but how he denied himself a larger place in comics history."

Ditko is one strange bird, no doubt about it. As reason contributor Julian Sanchez tells it:

[A]fter falling out with his Marvel collaborator Stan Lee, Ditko, well, went round the bend a little, and began churning out turgid, nigh-unreadable comics devoted to expounding Rand's Objectivist philosophy in tedious, rambling lectures punctuated by the odd fistfight. His primary mouthpiece was the costumed avenger Mr. A—as in "A is A," the tautology from which Rand purported to derive an elaborate system of metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and political philosophy. Along with another Ditko creation, The Question, Mr. A would serve as the model for Rorschach in Alan Moore's seminal Watchmen.

In other comic book-related news, Eric Alterman described the latest Batman flick, The Dark Knight, as "both libertarian and fascistic," while reason contributor Ilya Somin weighed in on the "libertarian law and economics of Batman."