Ditko's Question/Mr. A is no more forced or didactic than most Silver Age comics.

[Khadija Umayyad]

Steve Ditko is often accused of being didactic, especially in his philosophically-oriented books such as The Question and Mr. A. However, I don't think this is true at all, at least in the context of silver age comic books. The extensive dialogue with opponents, the overly composed thoughts of two-bit thugs, etc. are perfectly ordinary elements of Superman or Fantastic Four comics. How often are we treated to a discourse on why we can't kill mass murderers by Batman? Pretty much everyone with a brain and a will to live KNOWS that Comics Code morality is crap, and yet people will endlessly defend what is essentially a product of the 1950s version of those One Million Moms lunatics. Or, for that matter, any modern Marvel comic contains far, far too much in-combat dialogue; I mean how in the pits of Hel would they even hear one another with bombs and roaring green giants anyway? In terms of sheer wordiness Ditko has NOTHING on George Perez, witness Superman #1 for irrefutable evidence thereof.

It's one thing if you don't care for the talky and well-organized dialogue and thoughts of Silver Age books. I'm not always 100% onboard with it myself. But Ditko, even at the height of his Mister A Randista, was not using a style of scripting far removed from his contemporaries (and friends), none of whom can be pegged as an Objectivist or particularly political at all. Compared to Green Arrow/Green Lantern of the 70s he's positively on-topic with his social and political commentary. The only thing that's different is that Ditko's characters are Aristotilian libertarians, which annoys the leftoids reading it.