Jason wrote: ...I don't think that Stan should be vilified, but I also don't think that he is completely blameless for the mistaken impression that many people have that he wrote the stories and created the characters by himself...

Nobody I saw ever said Stan was completely blameless for the mistaken impression people have on who created what. The thing is that the Anti-Stan crowd wants to act as if he is some villainous sort, and rob him of any and all credit.

I say again: Marvel would not have been Marvel without Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, AND Stan Lee. And Stan Lee did give credit, and in fact instituted the credit box in the comics.

I also find it interesting that Chad wanted to say that Stan Lee did nothing, then later changes it to say basically, "Well, ok, but he did it badly." (In his opinion, which I do not share)

Chad wrote: ...By the very nature of the "Marvel Method", the plot was executed by the artist...

Not necessarily, based on several interviews with many Marvel creators I have read.

Stan Lee sometimes worked out plots beforehand, then the artist took that and ran with it, pencilling the pages and sometimes adding to the story, then Stan Lee scripted the story based on the art (or sometimes not, as he would write scenes differently than how it was drawn, and even disregarding notes on the art if it didn't match what he was wanting to write.

I bring up again the stories of Stan jumpimg up on a table and acting out the plots for the stories.  That was him helping plot the stories!

David Miller wrote: ...I find I prefer the writing in Kirby's Fourth World stories to just about anything scripted by Stan Lee...

Nothing wrong with that. We all have individual tastes.

The rest of the Wiki entry Chad decided not to share:

QUOTE: In a plot script the artist works from a story synopsis from the writer, rather than a full script. The artist creates page-by-page plot details on his or her own, after which the work is returned to the writer for the insertion of dialogue. Due to its widespread use at Marvel Comics beginning in the 1960s, primarily under writer-editor Stan Lee and artists Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, this approach became commonly known as the "Marvel method" or Marvel "House style".[3] Comics historian Mark Evanier writes that this "new means of collaboration . . . was born of necessity—Stan was overburdened with work—and to make use of Jack's great skill with storylines. . . . Sometimes Stan would type up a written plot outline for the artist. Sometimes, not."[4] As comic-book writer-editor Dennis O'Neil describes, the Marvel method ". . . requires the writer to begin by writing out a plot and add[ing] words when the penciled artwork is finished. . . .[I]n the mid-sixties, plots were seldom more than a typewritten page, and sometimes less," while writers in later times "might produce as many as twenty-five pages of plot for a twenty-two page story, and even include in them snatches of dialog. So a Marvel Method plot can run from a couple of paragraphs to something much longer and more elaborate."[5] The Marvel method was in place with at least one artist by early 1961, as Lee described in 2009 when speaking of his and Ditko's "short, five-page filler strips ... placed in any of our comics that had a few extra pages to fill", most prominently in Amazing Fantasy but even previously inAmazing Adventures and other "pre-superhero Marvel" science-fiction/fantasy anthology titles. "I'd dream up odd fantasy tales with an O. Henry type twist ending. All I had to do was give Steve a one-line description of the plot and he'd be off and running. He'd take those skeleton outlines I had given him and turn them into classic little works of art that ended up being far cooler than I had any right to expect."[6] By the 1970s, artists working under the Marvel method were sometimes given formal co-plotter credit, as with The Uncanny X-Men #108-143, by writer Chris Claremont and artist John Byrne. Advantages of the Marvel method over the full script method that have been cited by creators and industry professionals include (1)the artist is more visually-minded and thus often has a better notion of how a scene should play out, (2)it gives the artist more freedom,[7][8] and (3)it lightens the burden on the writer.[7] Cited disadvantages include (1)not all talented artists are talented writers, and some struggle over aspects such as plot ideas and pacing,[9][7] (2)it takes advantage of artists, who are typically paid for art alone even though they are essentially working as co-writers,[9]and (3)the artist's development of a story may clash with the writer's style.