How Stan Lee and Steve Ditko Create Spider-Man!

The splash page shows Stan Lee at his typewriter on the left. Stan has a small Hulk sitting on his head, Captain America perched on his shoulder, the Invisible Girl hanging from his tie, Thor straddling his right wrist, and Iron Man perched in the palm of his left hand. The Thing and Giant-Man stand on his typewriter. (Mr. Fantastic is squeezing through the typewriter's roller.) And the original X-Men, Spider-Man, Dr. Strange, the Wasp, the Human Torch, Sgt. Fury, and Dum Dum Dugan surround him. Stan is looking extremely put upon. On the right side of the splash page, Steve Ditko sleeps at his desk with a poster of Dr. Strange above him, seeming to be zapping him with a spell. Two spiders holding pencils are over at Steve's drawing board drawing Spider-Man. Looking back over all the years that Steve Ditko has refused to be profiled, photographed, or interviewed, it is hard to believe that Steve ever actually caricatured himself in a Spider-Man comic book.

It is the middle of the night. Stan Lee sits straight up in bed with an idea "for a Spider-Man epic". (The text tells us "for some unknown reason, inspirations only seem to come to ol' Stan in the middle of the night".) He decides to call Steve about it right away. Soon after, the duo is in the office. Stan tells Steve "we'll do twelve panels to each page". An exhausted Steve sits in an armchair and holds his head. "Waddaya mean we??" he asks. "I was a happy man till we teamed up", he adds, "Now, even my ulcers have ulcers!" (I think he stole that line from J. Jonah Jameson at the end of the Sinister Six story. Or J. Jonah Jameson stole it from him.)

The story conference wraps up and Stan "leaves to have a similar fight with Jack Kirby". Steve heads home to his office. The story features the Statue of Liberty so Steve goes to his bookshelf and pulls out some reference material on the statue. While he is at his drawing board, Steve gets a call from Stan who tells him the strip is already two weeks late. "You just gave it to me this morning!" Steve protests. "Oh yeah?" he says, "Well, the same to you!"

Then Steve gets to work. He roughs out a drawing of Spidey riding some sort of missile while flying past the head of the Statue of Liberty. After he is pleased with the layout, he reworks it to "improve the proportions a little". But then the phone rings again. It's Stan. "No" Steve yells, "I'm not finished yet! I just started!" and "How come you're always callin' me? Hasn't Dick Ayers got a phone?"

Once Steve has the story drawn, he brings it back to Stan who tells him "it looks like you're learning to draw with your eyes shut". Steve counters with, "You should talk! After that corny script you wrote!" "Waddaya mean corny?" says Stan, "I copied it from one of the best classics I could find." The duo trade insults for a while, then the pages are sent off to be lettered. Steve gets the strip back, gets on the phone to tell the operator "If I get any calls from a guy named Lee, tell him I've been drafted!" then settles in to do the inking. He uses a "fine pen-point" on the same Spidey/Statue of Liberty panel to tighten up the details. Then he uses a brush to "fill in the heavy black areas". Then, he erases the pencil lines left behind and the page is done. Except, he "forgot to draw Spidey's webbing!" So Steve carefully inks in the web-lines on Spidey's mask as he says, "If all the web-lines I've drawn were laid end to end, they still wouldn't be enough to fit around Lee's swelled head!" By this time, it is late at night. The moon is out and Steve is just finishing up a long stint hunched over his drawing board. Now that he's done, he thinks he'll "sleep for a whole week". But at that very moment, Stan sits straight up in bed with a delightful cry. He has another idea and it's better than the last. "Won't Steverino be happy!" he exclaims, "I'd better call him right away and break the good news!" (And we wonder why Stan and Steve broke up after only a few years of working together.)