The Safest Place...

Plot

Steve Ditko, the artist famous for creating The Amazing Spider-Man, had a long history creating weird science-fiction and horror comics in the fifties and sixties. Ditko was himself a loner who was virtually never interviewed or photographed. Not surprisingly, his specialty was in creating characters who didn’t “fit in.” Social outcast Peter Parker was but one example of this.

This one-shot is Ditko at his alienated best. It’s set in a totalitarian regime where the oppressors are involved in complicated schemes for power, with deadly consequences to those around them. The catalyst is a roll of film showing military preparations, taken by agents working against the regime. One by one, the agents are tracked down, until the trail leads to a harmless college professor and his wife. The professor is killed and his wife brutally questioned, but the film is never found by the police. Because it’s hidden…in the safest place in the world.