Huzzah! A comical-book themed story by the estimable Michael Chabon in the new ish of the New Yorker, “Citizen Conn.”

“Though he was at the time unknown to me even by reputation, I soon learned that my own husband had been among the millions of American boys in the nineteen-sixties whose minds were blown by Feather’s art work in comic books such as The New Frontiersmen and Mister Arcane.”

Sounds like he’s doing a Ditko take, mashed up with some other folks. Yes, that first fictionalized title is a Watchmen shoutout; in Moore’s comic, the title is a right-wing scandal sheet trusted by Rorshach with his memoirs. Ditko is legendary for his ground-breaking work for Marvel (on Spiderman and Doctor Strange), and for his eccentric legend as a big fan of Ayn Rand.

I haven’t read more than the first couple sentences, but the clever layering of Moore’s fictional right-wing publication into a Ditkoesque career seems amusing and appropriate. Among other things, Watchmen was a fictionalization of comics history, and that is a thing that Chabon has delighted in giving us for years now.

UPDATE: The story is more a take on the Stan Lee – Jack Kirby – Ditko thing, with Kirby and Ditko compressed into the single character of Mort Feather.
WITH a full-on cameo by none other than Seattle’s own Comics Journal, an issue of which is described as featuring a Gary Groth endless interview with the story’s Lee-alike, the “Citizen Conn” of the tale’s title.

The New Yorker has a discussion with Chabon on the piece up.

He sez Lee-Kirby, so I guess my Ditko stuff up top is off base.