To that point Kirby had created dozens of characters,  groups and comics. Stan had not created anything of note to then.
You probably have not read any of Kirby's pre FF comics to say he did not have characters with personality. 

There are also elements of Sea Devils, who more closely resemble the Fantastic Four than the Challengers of the Unknown. 

And that says exactly zero about who came up with the original idea.

And BTW Challengers was quite successful before Kirby left.

The only clear thing is without Kirby and Ditko, there is no Marvel Universe. Stan was not the one with the history of creating superheroes. 

 

You keep asking questions and getting annoyed when they are answered. And, quite frankly, you've been rude. If I've misunderstood you, perhaps the error was not entirely on my part.

My thoughts on Stan Lee -- and I realise that I'm going over ground that has already been discussed in this thread -- is that foremost he was a hell of a marketing guy, with a real vision for the Marvel brand. The former was put to good use in creating the idea of the expanded shared Marvel Universe in the early '60s and in encouraging the idea that Marvel readers were part of an elite club of discerning comic buyers. Both key factors in Marvel's rapid rise in popularity during the 60s and into the 70s.

He could also write some really snappy dialogue. Stan knew exactly how to "write up to" kids and by the mid-60s that included college age kids and even young servicemen. At its best, Lee's dialogue could be both funny and surprisingly philosophical. For example, the often repeated line from Spider-Man, "With great power must come great responsibility" is utterly inspired. That idea can be extrapolated out and into everyone's own life in multiple day to day situations. Hell, you can even extrapolate it out onto a global scale, particularly in our duty of care towards the Earth's environment and animal life, as the planet's dominant species. In fact, I honestly think you could quite easily start a religion based on "with great power must come great responsibility". It's Zen-like in its simplicity and universality. Pretty lofty philosophical stuff for a throwaway kid's comic.

As for the issue of how much or not Lee actually created, everything I've read leads me to believe that Lee was absolutely involved in the creation of many of Marvel's key characters

Let's take Spider-Man for example (because he's a character I know a lot about): the very name Spider-Man was Lee's idea (admittedly, almost certainly inspired by the pulp hero The Spider) and so too was the idea of making him a teenager, rather than an adult, which was more usual for "long underwear characters". Plus, it was Lee's scripting that gave the character his angst ridden personality and his wise-cracking characterisation.

Ditko obviously contributed a ton of design stuff, such as Spidey's costume, web-shooters, spider signal etc, and Jack Kirby also had some input, such as having Peter Parker orphaned and living with an elderly Aunt and Uncle (if memory serves). I think I'm right in saying that Kirby actually drew some pages for the first Spider-Man comic, but Lee rejected them as looking too "superhero-y", which is why Ditko was given the job as the comic's artist.

However, I also kinda suspect that Kirby played up his own involvement in Spider-Man's creation in later decades and somewhat tried to minimise and downplay both Lee and Ditko's involvement. But the fact is that the few interviews with Stan and Steve from the 60s and early 70s, when memories were still fresh, barely mention Kirby at all in connection with Spider-Man's creation.

Irrespective of all that though, it's clear to anyone who cares to read up on and research the character's history that Spider-Man was created by three people and that it was almost certainly Lee and Ditko who did the bulk of the heavy lifting.

So yeah...Lee definitely had a hand in creating many of these characters. Did he sometimes get carried away and take more credit that he should've? Yes, I think that's pretty much unassailable fact at this point. But irrespective of that, Lee was absolutely a co-creator of these characters. The idea that it was all Kirby, Ditko, Romita etc just doesn't hold water for me.

The trouble is that early on in the process, the artists signed away their legal rights to creator credits. 

Jack and Stan differ in their versions of who decided to move Marvel towards the superhero genre, but I do think it's interesting that when they discussed the origins of the Fantastic Four that Jack focused more on the science and Lee on the soap opera. 

Another interesting thing I discovered about Stan Lee is that a lot of his phrases he used (true believer, etc.) he picked up while he was working on military propaganda during the war. It's amusing to me that Marvel propaganda was lifted from war time propaganda. 

While there's validity in the argument that Stan never created anything of merit without Kirby, Ditko and others, does anybody really think Kirby would be remembered as anything more than a footnote if the Marvel explosion had never occurred? Comics may never have survived, and if they did they probably would have evolved in a totally different fashion. Kirby's pre-Marvel work may have been as lost to time as a lot of other work from the era. Even now, aside from Captain America, it's questionable how much interest there is in Kirby's pre-Marvel work among the general comic book reading populace. I think that side of the argument is blown out of proportion, though it's interesting to note that Kirby felt the same way towards Joe Simon that he did Lee in terms of who did all the creative work.