Everyone knows Stan Lee. The Marvel titan, co-creator of most of the studio's enduring characters, cameos in every film based on the company’s characters and has been delighted over the years to talk to fans, make public appearances and generally spread the Marvel gospel.

But Lee’s one-time colleague, his co-creator on Spider-Man and the man single-handedly responsible for inventing Doctor Strange, is another story entirely. Steve Ditko, who has died aged 90, didn't give another a formal interview after 1968 and avoided fans for almost as long since. He became the comic industry’s J.D. Salinger, though with much more extreme political views. Ditko became a devotee of Ayn Rand, a man who practices a strict philosophy of self-reliance, creative control and absolutely no truck with the supernatural.

And yet he lost control of much of his signature work, while one of his most famous creations uses magic to travel to other dimensions. So how did one of the industry’s legends - the man whose mind-blowing visuals are all over Benedict Cumberbatch's Doctor Strange movie - become such a contradictory figure?