An utterly fascinating article and pretty much resonates with all that I have read in the past from interviews with former Marvel bullpenners. Stan is at heart a nice guy and, back in the 60s and 70s, a great champion for the comic book industry (although he was much too super-hero oriented). But yes, too egotistical and for many years did not share credit appropriately

I thought it was both cute and sad how Stan's dwindling eye-sight is preventing him from reading anything, especially comics. And yes, Stan is overly credited on many Marvel works, but the atmosphere that he created with his fellow writers and artists is undeniable

Haven't read the article but yeah, the short answer to "So why, at 93, is his legacy in question?" is that it isn't, or shouldn't be: what's in question is the idea that he did it all by himself.

I would say that not only was Stan available to promote Marvel in magazines, on radio, etc, he was also really good at it - much better than Kirby or Ditko or really anyone else would have been.

Well said, berk and tolworthy.

I'd add that I find articles such as these, with their sulfurous aura of iconoclasm, to be usually more sensational than informative. It might be unfair, but whenever someone writes a piece with the general message "look, I'm attacking this great icon" I'm a little wary that the contrarian attitude will take precedence over actual substance. This one isn't bad per se, but I can't say I learned anything new; and its title is clearly provocative.

I'm no comics scholar, but even as a "normal' fan I've always known that Jack Kirby was the one who did most of the plotting on Fantastic Four, with Stan writing the dialogue and probably suggesting things like "hey, let's have Doctor Doom return next month". I never believed that all these characters had popped completely formed in Stan's head, nor do I think he ever claimed they did. Jack may say (as quoted in the article) that Stan did nothing at all but write dialog, but I'm convinced there was a collaboration in the process of creating Iron Man, the FF or Thor; whether it was Stan or the artist who did the heavy creative lifting probably depends on the character itself and the artist involved. I imagine someone like Kirby would have tended to be very creative. 

When the article goes into "he said, they said" mode, it seems to give more credence to Stan's critics than to the man himself. Fair enough, its title doesn't give the impression it's gonna be objective anyway. However, the continued success of the Stan Lee-written comics of the '60s (with artists other than Kirby and Ditko) suggests that Stan was either amazingly lucky, amazingly good at finding collaborators, or that he really was more than a mustache and a colourful character. His talent for organizing the entire shared universe, his flair for the quirky dialog, his trademark bombastic way to promote Marvel, they were all important in making the Marvel characters what they are today. 

Also, condemning Lee for his failing new projects is remarkably unfair. The man is 93, for crying out loud. Some geniuses can produce great works all their life, but most people (even talented ones) eventually get past their prime. Stan's writing was a revolution in the '60s, not because it was great writing per se but because it was unusual for comics at the time and started a new way of doing things. As early as the '80s it was already dated. What's being said in this article could easily be applied to, say, Neal Adams, except that it apparently looks cooler to blast Stan Lee than any other icon.

That Lee profited far more from Kirby's and Ditko's work than they did from his is undeniable and tragic. That Marvel treated its creators like crap is an absolute shame, particularly considering how awful the company was to Kirby, who gave the company its distinctive visual look. But is crucifying Lee the way to balance the scales? I think the guy is just an easy target, and the wrong one at that. I doubt he went out of his way to screw Kirby over; at worst he failed to stand up for his artists as they were abused by an unfair system.

When it comes to Stan Lee it has indeed become the "cool" thing to bash him. And in all fairness he does provide much of the ammunition. Between this article and others I've read, he doesn't come off well, especially in the "he said, they said" exchanges. In these situations where one side claims to be an angel and the other side says he's the devil, I've found the truth usually lies in the middle.

The news media is always in a hurry and wants to write up their article and move on to the next thing. Calling Stan the writer and creator of all these comics and characters is faster and easier than trying to explain the actual "Marvel Method" process, and makes for a better story. Stan however did little to dispel this idea either. That understandably infuriated the artists who were only given credit for the drawings, and not the other creative and plotting work they did.

I agree with the other fine folks here who have said that Stan was "The Man" when it came to the snappy dialog, the integration of the characters together to form the Marvel Universe, and shameless promotion of Marvel and himself. There really was no one else, then or since, who could have done it. Unfortunately from what many of his contemporaries have said, he was also much too quick to take credit for everything he could and downplayed the huge contributions made by men like Kirby & Ditko. He believed his own hype.

And the credits on the first page of the later FF issues usually said "Produced by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby", or something to that effect, which I always assumed was meant to be an acknowledgement that Kirby was doing more than just drawing the pictures for Stan's story. Can't easily reach my stack of FF issues right now to see when exactly that started, but yeah, probably to late and too little.

Stan Lee changed superhero comics forever: no one had done anything like it before and everything afterwards has been influenced by Stan's work directly or indirectly.

More important than the shared universe (didn't DC already have that?) to me were the addition of early-MAD-style humour and soap-opera sub-plots and characterisation.

I also think you have to make a distinction between his work with Kirby and Ditko on the one hand, where the artist was probably coming up with the basic concept and Stan was mainly an interpretor/scriptor, and on the other hand his work with artists like Romita or Colan, where Stan really was the writer for all intents and purposes, though the artist had a lot of freedom to interpret the story visually. We lump them all under the "Marvel method" but there's a big difference, IMO.