The TV show 60 Minutes II did a segment the other night on comics — Marvel, mainly — with a number of quotes from Stan Lee. I didn't see it. Yes, many of you wrote to alert me it was on and I thank you for that. But my interest in the current comic book industry and its health is an intermittent interest, at best.
However, I did read this article on the CBS website that summarizes the story. And I did receive a few e-mails from folks who were upset that Stan was identified as "the creator of Spider-Man" and that there was no mention of Steve Ditko. I have no inside info on this but I must note that Stan has been very conscientious lately about referring to himself as a "co-creator" (where applicable) and that in other interviews, barring awkward time constraints, he's mentioned Ditko or Kirby or other collaborators.
Here's my assumption: The producers of the segment must have known about Ditko. His name was on the movie and even the slightest bit of research yields the info that he co-created Spider-Man. But Mr. Ditko does not give interviews, and newspeople don't like to admit that they couldn't get to a vital part of a story. My guess is they decided to just omit him from the piece and to not use any footage where Stan mentioned him. Ditko not only went unmentioned in the interviews of Mr. Lee that made it to the air but he wasn't mentioned in the host's narration or the article on the website, either. That wasn't Stan's doing.
Let's not dump on Stan Lee. He's had enough headaches, lately. This Internet site is selling stock certificates from my old employer, Stan Lee Media. They're $89.99 each, marked down from $499.99. The last time the stock was listed for the now-defunct company, it was trading at three cents a share.