Who Created Spider-man?

Nice to see Savage Dragon creator Erik Larsen on Twitter confirming what I’ve been saying for some time about Stan Lee and his pension for stealing credit of the creation of Spider-man from Steve Ditko.  Here’s something I wrote on the subject about a year and a half ago. In a follow up to what I wrote there, I did finally confront Stan Lee about it via Twitter a couple months back.  It was a cathartic birthday present to myself.  Stan’s response?  He had his people send me the following direct messages:

Waddaya mean Stan Lee doesn’t give Ditko credit?

Stan has always put Ditko’s name on the credits with Stan’s

And Stan always made sure Ditk’os name was lettered just as large as his own!

I’m supposed to be impressed that the great Stan Lee let Steve Ditko’s name appear on the comic books he drew and that he didn’t make the name smaller than his own?!  What a generous man!  Oh, and here you can see Stan directly take credit for creating Spider-man in this amazing Jonathan Ross documentary: In Search of Steve Ditko.

I first learned of the Steve Ditko/Stan Lee Spider-man saga when I was a senior in high school.  As you may well know I didn’t grow up reading comic books and only knew a little about them until my late teens.  I assumed Stan Lee was the sole creator and thought he was also an artist until a classmate told me otherwise.  Stan Lee had done such a good job developing his legend and taking credit for everything that as an outsider to the comic world I assumed it was all true and he was the sole driving force behind Marvel.

Well, I was shocked to learn the truth.  This is what got me interested in comic books. I started studying the history and growing an appreciation for the art form.  The more I learned the more I liked it, and the more I hated everyone’s beloved Stan Lee.  I was shocked how many people seemed under his spell, and the plight of Steve Ditko became my battle cry.  It inspired me to start drawing comic books myself.  If you could look back at the original Black Snow GeoCities site you’d see that anti-Lee and pro-Ditko rhetoric was laced throughout from the very beginning.  So my hate for Stan Lee and my sympathy for Ditko has been a driving force all these years.  Thanks a lot Ditko for getting me into comics and making me into a bigger nerd than ever!

Stan Lee, you’re a glory-hound asshole.  Your sole purpose in life seems to be to stroke your enormous ego.  You are a sham only concerned with growing your legend and creating a marketable brand around your name.  You are shameless, showing no integrity, and hurting others along the way.  At least you’ll be dead soon.