in 1981, the managing editor. From this time up through the mid-1970s, Ditko worked exclusively for Charlton and various small press/independent publishers. Frank McLaughlin, Charlton's art director during this period, describes Ditko as living "in a local hotel in Derby for a while. He was a very happy-go-lucky guy with a great sense of humor at that time, and always supplied the [female] color separators with candy and other little gifts". For Charlton in 1974 he did Liberty Belle backup stories in E-Man and conceived Killjoy. Ditko produced much work for Charlton's science-fiction and horror titles, as well as for former Marvel publisher Martin Goodman's start-up line Atlas/Seaboard Comics, where he co-created the superhero the Destructor with writer Archie Goodwin, and penciled all four issues of the namesake series (Feb.–Aug. 1975), the first two of which were inked by Wally Wood. Ditko worked on the second and third issues of Tiger-Man and the third issue of Morlock 2001, with Bernie Wrightson inking. After 1975 Ditko returned to DC Comics in 1975, creating a short-lived title, Shade, the Changing Man (1977–1978). Shade was later revived, without Ditko's involvement, in DC's mature-audience imprint Vertigo. With writer Paul Levitz, he co-created the four-issue sword and sorcery series Stalker (1975–1976). Ditko and writer Gerry Conway produced the first issue of a two-issue Man-Bat series. He also revived the Creeper and did such various other jobs as a short Demon backup series in 1979, created The Odd Man and stories in DC's horror and science-fiction anthologies. Editor Jack C. Harris hired Ditko as guest artist on several issues of The Legion of Super-Heroes, a decision which garnered a mixed reaction from the title's readership. Ditko also drew the Prince Gavyn version of Starman in Adventure Comics #467–478 (1980). He then decamped to do work for a variety of publishers, briefly contributing to DC again in the mid-1980s, with four pinups of his characters for Who's Who: The Definitive Directory of the DC Universe and a pinup for Superman #400 (Oct. 1984) and its companion portfolio. Ditko returned to Marvel in 1979, taking over Jack Kirby's Machine Man, drawing The Micronauts and Captain Universe, and continuing to freelance for the company into the late 1990s. Starting in 1984, he penciled the last two years of the space-robot series Rom. A Godzilla story by Ditko and Marv Wolfman was changed into a Dragon Lord story published in