Stephen J. Ditko (born 2 November 1927) is an American comic book artist and writer best known as the co-creator of the Marvel Comics heroes Spider-Man and Doctor Strange. He was inducted into the comics industry's Jack Kirby Hall of Fame in 1990, and into the Will Eisner Award Hall of Fame in 1994.

Stephen J. Ditko was born in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, the son of first-generation Americans of Austrian/Czechoslovakian descent: Stephen Ditko, an artistically talented master carpenter at a steel mill, and Anna, a homemaker. The second-eldest child in a working-class family, he was preceded by sister Anna Marie and followed in uncertain order by sister Betty and brother Patrick.

Inspired by his father's love of newspaper comic strips, particularly Hal Foster's Prince Valiant, Ditko found his interest in comics accelerated by the introduction of superhero Batman in 1940, and by Will Eisner's The Spirit, which appeared in a tabloid-sized comic-book insert in Sunday newspapers. Good with his hands, Ditko in junior high school was part of a group of students who crafted wooden models of German airplanes to aid civilian World War II aircraft-spotters. Upon graduating from Johnstown High School in 1945, he enlisted in the U.S. Army on October 26, 1945, and did military service in postwar Germany, where he drew comics for an Army newspaper.

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