The Passion of Jonathan Ross...

Jonathan Ross is passionate about comics. Anyone who can tell that a Doctor Strange toy figure is from 2005 - because 'ToyBiz' stopped making Marvel figures in 2006 and sold the licence to Hasbro, as he implies - is very much in teh comic-book know.
He has been Britain's pop cultural 'Renaissance Man' for twenty years - as au fait with revelling in fads and crazes as he is arguing that some of them be considered genuine art forms. While he is revenant in circles blessed by Charles Saatchi he is vehement in his proclamation of comic books and comedy as genres equally as artistically valid. In fact he perceives the, until recent times, relative anonymity of British comic book pioneers such as Alan Moore, Grant Morrison and Neil Gaiman as a shameful aspect of the British cultural cognoscenti.
His other foot rooted in the world of academia and that milieu's appreciation of artists, it was needed, perhaps, that the story of reclusive, ambiguous and mysterious American comic-book artist Steve Ditko be told by him.
Ditko made his name during the golden age of Marvel comics in the early nineteen sixties. He was the first artist to draw Spider-Man - he would go one step further than this, saying that rather than be the co-creator, he conceived the character from the most basic seed of an idea of Stan Lee.
Stan Lee was the chief editor and writer during this era that cemented Marvel's name. In recent years American geek-culture evangelists, such as Kevin Smith and the staff of Wizard magazines, have made Lee more of an icon than he made himself (Lee used to place himself in the action of some of his comics as if some superhero in the pantheon of Marvel with the power of avuncularity.) Lee became a Willy Wonka figure, partly mythical, who had woven all of Marvel's web and money spinning characters from his imagination.
Ross sets out to right the story, objectively.
Those who have never bought Lee's canonisation by Uber-nerds joined the polar opposite camp, shouting from rooftops and websites that he was a huckster, a charlatan who, fired by egotism, rode to success on the backs of other writers and artists. Ross thinks this unfair, not wishing to paint him as the villain of the piece. Stan Lee appears in this himself, acknowledging co-creators.
It is true that the object of Ross's quest, Ditko, lives in near poverty compared to the riches he could have enjoyed from countless royalties spawned by Spidey and others - but he appears to have chosen this life.
Lee's detractors previously dredged up the story of the talented but irascible Jack Kirby - the "king" of comic book artists - who bequeathed not a horde of wealth from his endeavours on Marvel and DC comics, but rather a legacy of vitriol. A previous documentary related a story of how Kirby, original artist of Iron Man, the Hulk and X-Men, was led back to his car, weeping, from a Toys R Us store in the 1980s. The store purveyed toys of his designs from whose sales he would receive no cut.
Kirby thought everyone from Lee to George Lucas (whose Star Wars saga had a central premise similar to Kirby's New Gods tales) had ripped him off. In truth, he had not lived to see the comic-book apotheosise in the wake of Watchmen and Tim Burton's 'Batman', an era from which he may have profited a great deal.
Ditko, Ross finds, is someone who argues for credit but not necessarily money. He walked away from Marvel, apparently unable to ally his introverted demeanour with that of the ringmaster Lee. In the late nineties Ditko dashed off a fanzine called 'Tsk Tsk' rebuking Lee and drawing a table to contrast Lee's claim of co-creation of Spider-Man with Ditko's assertion of near total authorship. This wasn't presented as a lawsuit, however, merely as part of almost eighteenth-century style pamphleteering. He is possessed of old morals, displayed no more prevalently than in Ditko's 'Mr. A'. Alan Moore based 'Watchmen's Rorschach on this character and relates a tale whereby Ditko drew Mr. A's prop - a domino-divided black and white card - and showed it to a friend. "There is black, and there is white, and there is nothing in between." he is meant to have advised, forebodingly.
Moore is an interesting pundit - jovial and as enthusiastic a fan of Ditko as modern "comic-book geeks" are for him. However his amusement at Ditko's uptightness seems a trifle hypocritical as Moore seems to have adopted Ditko’s jealous guarding of his intellectual property in his eagerness to keep his comics and film adaptations of his comics (rarely well done or true to the original, admittedly)separate entities.
Ditko shrinks from the spotlight - or needs to, almost exactly as Lee thrives in it. Lee has made a cameo appearance in every recent big-budget Marvel movie adaptation since the mid eighties, even in the films of characters he had little to do with. He has become a lucky mascot. Ditko behaves diametrically opposed - declining a photograph with Ross and a near-diffident Neil Gaiman after they locate him at his offices in New York.
The documentary, in the end, proves that mythmakers need heroes-in-waiting to be their new gods. Ross made a worthy film here, but mainly because his quarry was so reluctant. A film about Stan Lee would echo the fervour of The Passion of the Christ, especially if Kevin Smith made it. This film, in search of Ditko, is 'Life of Brian' - very British, far deeper and poignantly funny.
You don't need to follow Ditko. You don't need to follow anyone.