Ditko contributed a lot of the plotting, no doubt. But Lee determined the voices of the many characters in the strip. Just imagine any of the early sixties writers trying to do the same thing, and it should be obvious nobody had the necessary skill-set. Even the few DC writers who had some idea of what Lee was doing, like Haney and Drake, couldn't have pulled it off.

That may be true... but I still consider what Ditko did to be considered writing by any other name.

Because actions speak louder than words, and the conflict of the story-the situations the plotter puts the character in and how he/she has the character respond and react to those situations via their actions-determines and defines a lot more about the character than the words. And when words and actions are at odds, it is the actions that are the true measure of the character, not the words. A great storyteller can convey action and character in sequential art without needing dialogue or captions to define or express the character, that is where all the work of writing or storytelling is done when you are working in a visual medium. Take away the words and you still have a story through the sequential narrative. Take away the sequential narrative and you have words with no meaning and no story. Look at an unlettered Ditko page and you still can see the story and understand the character of Spidey, his antagonists and the supporting cast. Look at the lettering without the Ditko art and you really have nothing. 

Lee was a great dialogue contributor on Ditko's Spidey and Doc Strange, but those were Ditko's stories aided and abetted by Stan, not the other way around. If you want to see Lee's Spidey, you look at the newspaper strip and the Romita era Amazing and see what Lee's about sans Ditko's driving force, and there is a definitive difference there. I like them both, but there are not cut from the same cloth. 

-M

edit to add: this is especially true in books created in the "Marvel style" where plot and art come before the dialogue is even thought of. Lee would get essentially a full story plotted and drawn by Ditko before he added anything to it. 

For the purposes of the poll, I clicked "yes". I think the only real competition to the Lee/Ditko Spider-Man stories are the Lee/Romita Spider-Man stories.

I guess these types of discussions will never cease. Lee  and Romita were awesome when Ditko left. Am I to give the credit to Romita instead of Lee ? Lee was the major piece of the puzzle or else the Spider-man would have drooped in popularity instead of increasing.

I certainly haven't read every Spidey comic (in fact, I've probably read relatively few of them), but I'd say it's a toss up between Stern, Busiek, and Dan Slott for me.

Speaking louder" is not necessarily "speaking more clearly"," much less communicating more. Yes, there are good stories that can be told by art alone, with little or no dialogue, but their quality doesn't nullify the quality we find in stories with intense or amusing dialogue. Apples and oranges, I'd say.



The medium of comics is dependent on imagery to set much of the mood and the pace, but words have the power to convey a lot more sheer information, and on occasion they can radically alter the context of a given scene. Anyone who's read a lot of Marvel comics over the years has probably heard stories about times when a writer and artist have been at odds in what they wanted to communicate. But the ways in which they enhance one another are so much more meaningful. Yes, Ditko can draw a moving panel showing Spidey in despair after failed to stop the Green Goblin's rampage, but the emotion of despair is rather general until you have words, either in caption or dialogue, to give the emotion narrative context.