One of those days of weird confluences. It’s comics great Steve Ditko’s birthday, and, unrelated, today’s Slate content includes a lengthy examination of Ayn Rand.
Rand, of course, is the author of books such as Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead. But of important note is her establishment of objectivism, which has led her to become a heroic figure to some conservatives … and Ditko. Rand, the article explains, escaped from a Russia controlled by Bolsheviks and spent her life espousing hatred toward non-elites. Johann Hari writes of Rand’s influence in America:
In a country where almost everyone believes—wrongly, on the whole—that they are self-made, perhaps it is easier to have contempt for people who didn’t make much of themselves. And Rand taps into something deeper still. The founding myth of America is that the nation was built out of nothing, using only reason and willpower.
Interestingly, Rand pushed for the removal of government control while creating a life for herself in which she controlled and dominated all those in her inner circle. In essence, she became that which she opposed.
Rand’s influence on Ditko is well known but no particularly well understood, as far as I’ve read. This is in part because Ditko is rarely seen or heard from. His pursuit of objectivism seems to have coincided with his departure from being a major creator in comics, and the one fault I recall from the otherwise worthwhile Strange and Stranger: The World of Steve Ditko is that connection wasn’t fully explored.
