Abraham Riesman's Biography of Stan Lee - True Believer

[Revolutionary_Jack]

I have noticed that on CBR Forums there hasn't been much discussion about Abraham Riesman's biography of Stan Lee. I think there was a thread about Roy Thomas' defense of Lee against the book in his article for Hollywood Reporter (which is emotionally understandable but not really a proper response in my view). On the whole this is the best book ever written about Marvel comics, and possibly the best biography of any comics figure. It does what I've long insisted comics scholarship do, look at documentary evidence as much as possible, trawl through archives and reconstruct the narrative and find the version that makes the best sense. Riesman's book has finally brought a good level of professionalism to comics history which otherwise has been lacking. The comics business has too long been too incestuous, comics sites depend on the industry for interviews and access, and in turn the industry gives comics journos a platform for internships and working in the comics business directly.

Are there issues with it? Yeah there are, all books of scholarship are written with the aim that they will be overcome down the line. Riesman's book has weaknesses in his lack of critical interest in the comics and stories themselves, likewise his perpetuation of the black legend on Jim Shooter, and also for his tunnel-view on the issue of credit over everything else. I guess Riesman wrote this book with the idea of mainstreaming stuff known more among comics aficionados to a wider audience, hence he wrote a book that's fairly short for a biography (some 335 pages) and doesn't discuss comics continuity stuff and comics stories that most people wouldn't get.

In terms of what Riesman's biography has to say or do with Spider-Man specifically, there's nothing directly tied to it (because again Riesman tries to avoid stuff happening in-continuity and stories, so for instance if you want to know about stuff like the Spider-Marriage or so on, that's not covered here) but anecdotally and biographically there's some interesting stuff:
-- Riesman generally treats Steve Ditko respectfully in this book. Usually Lee biographies and so on use Ditko's Randian turn (which Riesman acknowdledges came later) as a way to justify and insist on Stan Lee as the main creator or imply that he was right to screw him later. There's no repetition of the spurious and false notion that Ditko didn't want Norman to be the Green Goblin, which is probably a first. Riesman even acknowledges that the usual idea that "Stan wanted character depth and realism and Ditko wanted action" is false because evidence suggests that Ditko wanted realism more than Stan Lee.
-- Blake Bell's biography of Steve Ditko revealed that Stan Lee was the one interested in Ayn Rand and that he was the one who introduced Ditko to Rand's books when the latter asked for book recommendations. Here we get more corroborating evidence. I honestly don't know if this was ever covered or suggested but Jack Kirby wanted to do a Fantastic Four comic that parodied Ayn Rand's ideas and Stan Lee rejected the idea and censored it (Page 157). So essentially the Randian elements in Spider-Man that so many people have spilled ink over, it turns out it was "Stan Lee All Along" (cue that song from Wanda Vision).
-- To add to that, Riesman presents Stan Lee as a union-buster, someone who repeatedly refused to be involved in unionizing, at one point almost engaging in a criminal action of financial collusion with DC to stop employees from organizing.
-- Riesman quotes Steve Ditko at one point in the '90s interacting with Stan in a somewhat friendly light and when Lee suggests working on Spider-Man again, Ditko says, "I can't care about Spider-Man as much as I did back then" which is both realistic but also somewhat sad at the same time (Page 234).
-- When Stan Lee was making his cameo in Spider-Man 1, Sam Raimi was against the idea saying "I know Stan. He can't act" (Page 279).

The "Ditko Estate" also provided Riesman a brand new photo of Ditko (from the 1950s) where he looks more Peter Parker-esque than before, seriously the body language is totally Peter:

Ditko in '50s .jpg

Biographical details that maybe sheds some light on Spider-Man.
-- In terms of Stan Lee's Jewishness, which is central to arguments about Spider-Man being Jewish or not, Riesman pours cold water on it all. Stan Lee was never a practitioner of his faith, nor an obsever of it, and never identified as Jewish across his entire life. In fact, Stan Lee agreed that his daughter should be baptized as a Christian in accordance with her mother's religious identity and her wishes. Stan Lee himself said multiple times he was non-religious and secular (maybe an atheist but he never argues for that either).
-- One neat detail. Stan Lee and his wife Joan had a whirlwind romance that began when Stan knocked on the door and Joan opened it and Stan instantly felt floored. At the time she was married so she had to arrange a quickie divorce and Stan desperate to prove that he was committed insisted on a quick marriage, so the two of them got married before a judge in Reno (and later had a more traditional wedding). Riesman doesn't point this out but this does echo Peter and Mary Jane's first meeting at the doorstep, and of course more directly, Stan Lee's decision to have Peter and MJ get married before a judge in a civil ceremony.
-- The intense family drama in Stan Lee's life...his difficult relationship with his father (unlike Stan he was defiantly Jewish and religiously observant and saw his sons as disappointments, had no respect for their success in comics), and his daughter does highlight the stuff in the Lee-Romita era, namely Harry's issues with his father, Gwen's intense relationship with her dad George and so on. Gerry Conway said multiple times that Gwen Stacy as redesigned by Romita was a spitting image of Stan Lee's wife and daughter and seeing the photos printed here bears that out.

[Kaitou D. Kid]

How much later did Dikto's Randian turn come according to Riesman? Ditko published Mr. A only a year after leaving Spider-Man.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

How much later did Dikto's Randian turn come according to Riesman? Ditko published Mr. A only a year after leaving Spider-Man.

He doesn't mention that, because his focus is on Lee.

What was interesting is that Riesman didn't do what previous writers of Lee have done by talking about Ditko as some weirdo whose viewpoints shouldn't be listened to at all. The reason Ditko left Marvel was because of pay dispute, lack of credit and general bad treatment.

That's why I mentioned it, and it also suggests that there was an element of Randian ideas in Lee (most obviously in the case of Iron Man/Tony Stark) especially the bit about censoring Kirby's satire on Rand.

Blake Bell's biography quotes Flo Steinberg saying that Ditko never talked about politics while he was at Marvel, and Ditko becoming a Randian was a big surprise because right before he was a hero for counter-cultural people because of Dr. Strange (genuinely popular among hippies) and Spider-Man (hip in Greenwich Village).

My own personal feeling reading Blake Bell's book is that Ditko radicalized over time. That while working at Marvel slowly bit by bit he became hardened and his entire later career is a bitter traumatic acting out of his feelings of powerlessness while working there.

But what's interesting to me is the see-saw relationship between Ditko and Lee and how Rand is a key. Ditko and Lee were friendly at first, Lee introduced him to Rand but then when Lee and Ditko stopped being friendly, Ditko clung to Rand more fiercely than Lee ever would (Lee was into fads and fashions, when Rand was popular and mainstream he read her, when she wasn't, he moved on but Ditko didn't).

[Frontier]

I remember the visual biography of Stan that Peter David helped with depicted Stan and Joan's first meeting as basically the "Face it Tiger..." moment.

""I know Stan. He can't act" Well, yeah, we all know he's playing himself .

[Revolutionary_Jack]

I remember the visual biography of Stan that Peter David helped with depicted Stan and Joan's first meeting as basically the "Face it Tiger..." moment.

""I know Stan. He can't act" Well, yeah, we all know he's playing himself .

There's some stuff about that PAD visual biography in this comic notably Stan insisting that Peter avoid talking about the financial scams that the companies he started in the 90s got involved in.

[Frontier]

There's some stuff about that PAD visual biography in this comic notably Stan insisting that Peter avoid talking about the financial scams that the companies he started in the 90s got involved in.

Can't say I'm surprised...

[Confuzzled]

Interesting. I didn't know it was Lee who was the bigger Randian fan initially. If Ditko not wanting Norman to be The Green Goblin is a lie, then it's a particularly insidious and clever one by Lee's camp.

Though I still feel Romita was sorely needed when he came onto the title for its survival, as it was severely underwhelming at that point in time under Ditko/Lee.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

Interesting. I didn't know it was Lee who was the bigger Randian fan initially.

Ayn Rand remember was a popular and mainstream writer in the '50s to the '60s. Stan Lee was a Randian when it was safe and easy to be one, while Ditko became a Randian when it was distinctly out of favor among the target audience. I honestly don't know which is worse. On a personal level, Ditko's Randian turn was profoundly self-destructive but didn't harm society whereas Stan Lee mainlining or disguising his Randian-ideas arguably had a more insidious impact. Ditko did outright propaganda for Ayn Rand with Mr. A but that had no impact or influence whatsoever, no real-life Randian on the policy level (like former House Speaker Paul Ryan) ever got hooked onto Rand by Mr. A.

Randian elements are there right through Lee's work. Take Iron Man, a character co-created by Kirby/Don Heck/Stan Lee, Steve Ditko (who came up with the red and gold color scheme) and Larry Leiber (Lee's brother and basically the only admirable member of the entire family) who was a weapons manufacturer turned hero. Iron Man is the one Marvel character who you could say is the closest to Stan Lee autobiographically speaking -- 40s dude who was selfish and greedy and worked in a corrupt industry but feels guilty and tries to reform. IRON MAN of course was a big flop he was never a major Marvel superhero in the comics or among the public but then in 2008 RDJ revived the character and suddenly Tony Stark's IM with all the Randianism implicit in Lee succeeded finally in mainlining a heroic pro-business ideology. Think of how many business and corporate bros look at Tony Stark's redemption story as a validation or how Elon Musk used the fact that RDJ used him as a model for Stark as part of his social media cult-of-personality (all disguising the fact that like Stan Lee, he had nothing to do with inventing his most famous product, the Tesla automobile).

Lee in private is recorded talking about and complaining about high taxes, and is often uncomfortable whenever writers make pitches attacking munitions and other business people. That's all documented by Riesman. Stan Lee wanted to be seen as a safe middle-of-the-road liberal, but who had fiscal conservative feelings against workers' comp, higher wages, unions and being in favor of low taxes. So Stan Lee was definitely someone who shared Ayn Rand's economic views but avoided the extremes which she took it to.

As far as Spider-Man goes, certain stuff about the Randianism like Jonah's big speech early in the comics' run about him wanting to tear down Spider-Man because that's how he feels motivated which many saw as Ditko now makes sense as the work of Stan Lee himself.

If Ditko not wanting Norman to be The Green Goblin is a lie,

No "if", it's a total lie and false rumor. Easily disproven by reading the actual comics. I mean the big tell is that Norman Osborn and Harry Osborn are far more unsympathetic in Ditko's run and far more sympathetic in Stan Lee and Romita's run.

...then it's a particularly insidious and clever one by Lee's camp.

It originated as a rumor among fans and others and over time Stan Lee himself spouted and repeated it and passed it down (which Lee has a tendency to do). Riesman makes it clear, Ditko left because of a pay dispute pure and simple.

Though I still feel Romita was sorely needed when he came onto the title for its survival, as it was severely underwhelming at that point in time under Ditko/Lee.

Steve Ditko always saw Spider-Man as a commercial gig one he enjoyed doing but not really as a big artistic expression or masterwork. Blake Bell's biography pointed out that Ditko cared far more for his work on Doctor Strange. And even then Ditko was enough of a professional that he wrote his final issues for Spider-Man and Doctor Strange before announcing he's quitting giving due notice for them to find his successor and leaving behind his subplots for the next writer to take over.

[Kaitou D. Kid]

Though I still feel Romita was sorely needed when he came onto the title for its survival, as it was severely underwhelming at that point in time under Ditko/Lee.

I think the end of the Lee/Ditko run had some of the best issues in it, especially the Master Planner Saga.

There was however one thing that always confused me about Dikto's last issues. It's obvious by ASM # 34 that Ditko was setting up Peter to outgrow his loner status and become more outgoing like in the Romita run. However, Ditko himself seemed to be a pretty big loner and not at all like what Peter eventually evolved into. I wasn't sure how he was planning to write a side of Peter he didn't have as much personal experience with.

Now that we know Ditko already made plans to quit prior to writing those issues, it makes sense. I'm guessing he intentionally left off Peter in a place where Lee and Romita can continue Spider-Man's story on their own strengths.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

There was however one thing that always confused me about Dikto's last issues. It's obvious by ASM # 34 that Ditko was setting up Peter to outgrow his loner status and become more outgoing like in the Romita run. However, Ditko himself seemed to be a pretty big loner and not at all like what Peter eventually evolved into. I wasn't sure how he was planning to write a side of Peter he didn't have as much personal experience with.

Now that we know Ditko already made plans to quit prior to writing those issues, it makes sense. I'm guessing he intentionally left off Peter in a place where Lee and Romita can continue Spider-Man's story on their own strengths.

Yeah. One of the things Spider-Man scholarship has always been confused by is the abrupt and stark stylistic shift between Ditko and Romita Sr, the book changes visibly and narratively in tone from Ditko's last issue and Romita Sr's first. That big contrast and also Ditko's abrupt departure which many fans remarked on in letters' pages (because Stan had been promoting this idea that the Marvel Bullpen was some big happy family, which it wasn't). However in a broad sense Romita's run consolidated the subplots that Ditko left dangling -- namely the Green Goblin mystery and Peter's intersection with Osborn father and son, and the Mary Jane Watson romance. Ditko introduced Mary Jane Watson for the first time in ASM#25 which was the first issue he had plotting credit on and her next "pre-appearance" was the last panels of the last issue he worked on. So Romita Sr' took that and built off the stuff that he set up, namely that Mary Jane was some super-gorgeous woman. So ultimately there is essential continuity between Ditko's run and Romita Sr's run.

In some ways, Romita Sr. improved because Ditko implied that Mary Jane is middle-class or somewhat rich. In his last issue he shows MJ driving off a car but Romita Sr. introduces her as a working-class girl who lives in a cheap apartment by herself and who doesn't have any mode of transportation and is impressed by Peter's moped (and later Harry's car).

One thing that Spider-Man proves unquestionably is that the artists were far more the writers than Lee was. Lee being the main writer of Spider-Man should have meant that Ditko and Romita Sr. felt continuous and seamless but the fact that you have such an abrupt shift means quite clearly that Ditko was the main creator of Spider-Man and that when Romita Sr. came in, he took over.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

I think the end of the Lee/Ditko run had some of the best issues in it, especially the Master Planner Saga.

I like Ditko's final issues too. Obviously the Master Planner Saga (which Riesman confirms is entirely Ditko's work though Lee tried claiming credit for it) is the peak. I also love Ditko's final issues which sets up Norman Osborn as the villain and foreshadows him being the Green Goblin (I mean the dude literally wears a green suit) the one with Mendell Stromm and the final one where Norman siccs a mob on Spider-Man while wearing a false beard and disguise.

One thing you get in Ditko's characterization of Norman is that he presents him as entirely rational. There's none of that split-personality craziness that Lee-Romita's run introduced and later writers followed on. Ditko's Norman is closest to the Norman of Weissman's Spectacular Spider-Man in characterization - cruelly intelligent, cold-blooded and manipulative of people around him.

[NC_Yankee]

I like Ditko's final issues too. Obviously the Master Planner Saga (which Riesman confirms is entirely Ditko's work though Lee tried claiming credit for it) is the peak. I also love Ditko's final issues which sets up Norman Osborn as the villain and foreshadows him being the Green Goblin (I mean the dude literally wears a green suit) the one with Mendell Stromm and the final one where Norman siccs a mob on Spider-Man while wearing a false beard and disguise.

One thing you get in Ditko's characterization of Norman is that he presents him as entirely rational. There's none of that split-personality craziness that Lee-Romita's run introduced and later writers followed on. Ditko's Norman is closest to the Norman of Weissman's Spectacular Spider-Man in characterization - cruelly intelligent, cold-blooded and manipulative of people around him.

I am a huge fan of the Master Planner Saga ( issue 33 is my all time favorite), and the thing about Ditko issues thst stands out is almost every issue is good (even after over half a century). One other point, I found the early picture of Steve Ditko to be very interesting. Why? The way Peter resembled him. I have read Ditko was very resentful about things financially speaking, and I wonder if he hated Spider-Man like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle despised Sherlock Holmes. But even if he did, like Doyle and Holmes he will live on through Spider-Man and Dr. Strange, and that is something he can be proud about.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

I am a huge fan of the Master Planner Saga ( issue 33 is my all time favorite), and the thing about Ditko issues thst stands out is almost every issue is good (even after over half a century). One other point, I found the early picture of Steve Ditko to be very interesting. Why? The way Peter resembled him.

That's been known for some time. Ditko's high school photograph is a dead-ringer for Peter in AF#15:



Blake Bell's biography that Ditko mined his own high school memories which were far more recent than Lee's (owing to being younger than him by 7 years and essentially a generation apart) and he modeled the architecture of Midtown High School on his school in Pennsylvania and used some of his classmates as general references (in terms of visual resemblances not in personality...there's no evidence to suggest that Ditko knew a real-life Flash Thompson for instance).

That biographical detail kind of stands apart from recent attempts to situate Peter in a realistic high school milieu because that was absolutely not the intent at the start. Neither Ditko nor Lee intended Peter to be a literal realistic representative of a teenager.

I wonder if he hated Spider-Man like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle despised Sherlock Holmes. But even if he did, like Doyle and Holmes he will live on through Spider-Man and Dr. Strange, and that is something he can be proud about.

It's not the same thing. Arthur Conan Doyle never had to contest or be angry about being stiffed over the fact that he had to be stiffed out of credit and pay over Sherlock Holmes.

I think Ditko had some amount of resentment about the success of these creations (in Spider-Man's case) being attached to Lee over him, and also overshadowing the rest of his output. It's more acute with Ditko than Kirby. Kirby is famously consistent and prolific who crafted iconic creations and titles every decade of his career but with Ditko, while he did excellent stuff after he left Marvel (those Warren Horror comics above all) he never matched what came before.

At the same time I think he was happy that he got to do all he could with those characters and was happy to move on from it, and he never had issues with others continuing the characters and stories after him. He wasn't possessive about them at all, neither was Jack Kirby. Both Ditko and Kirby simply wanted pay and proper credit and acknowledgement. They created those characters with the idea that they be serial creations that artists and writers after them would continue to use. It's not like Alan Moore/Gibbons' Watchmen which they intended to be a one-and-done serial graphic novel with its characters existing in those pages itself but which DC is now open about making them serial creations they were never intended to be.

[Kaitou D. Kid]

Yeah. One of the things Spider-Man scholarship has always been confused by is the abrupt and stark stylistic shift between Ditko and Romita Sr, the book changes visibly and narratively in tone from Ditko's last issue and Romita Sr's first. That big contrast and also Ditko's abrupt departure which many fans remarked on in letters' pages (because Stan had been promoting this idea that the Marvel Bullpen was some big happy family, which it wasn't). However in a broad sense Romita's run consolidated the subplots that Ditko left dangling -- namely the Green Goblin mystery and Peter's intersection with Osborn father and son, and the Mary Jane Watson romance. Ditko introduced Mary Jane Watson for the first time in ASM#25 which was the first issue he had plotting credit on and her next "pre-appearance" was the last panels of the last issue he worked on. So Romita Sr' took that and built off the stuff that he set up, namely that Mary Jane was some super-gorgeous woman. So ultimately there is essential continuity between Ditko's run and Romita Sr's run.

In some ways, Romita Sr. improved because Ditko implied that Mary Jane is middle-class or somewhat rich. In his last issue he shows MJ driving off a car but Romita Sr. introduces her as a working-class girl who lives in a cheap apartment by herself and who doesn't have any mode of transportation and is impressed by Peter's moped (and later Harry's car).

One thing that Spider-Man proves unquestionably is that the artists were far more the writers than Lee was. Lee being the main writer of Spider-Man should have meant that Ditko and Romita Sr. felt continuous and seamless but the fact that you have such an abrupt shift means quite clearly that Ditko was the main creator of Spider-Man and that when Romita Sr. came in, he took over.

It sucks that we don't know exactly how much Stan and Steve each contributed to Spider-Man since they're both dead (and it's not like they were disclosing much information on what it was like working together even prior to their deaths), but thinking of Ditko as almost the sole creator of Spider-Man with Stan just adding in some dialogue feels...weird. I'm guessing it's because so much of Modern Spider-Man feels like the opposite of the kind of person Ditko seemed to be, even if we give him the benefit of the doubt that he wasn't some hardcore Randian and uncompromiser. When I look at the entire Spider-Man Canon as a whole, I don't know if I see more Ditko than Lee.

I mean, I look at that picture in your opening post and I see more of the quiet Peter from high school than the Peter that became more outgoing and started to look and dress like James Dean. And when I read about Dikto's life prior to his death (alone/unmarried, a recluse, etc.), it makes Modern Peter Parker look like he is living the dream, even by Post-OMD standards.

It feels like Spider-Man as a person outgrew Ditko, in a way. I mean, if Ditko really came back in the 90s to work on Spider-Man like Stan asked him to, would he even know what to do? By that point Peter Parker as a person had more relationship and interpersonal skills than Ditko seemed to have. So I can kinda understand why he wouldn't care about doing Spider-Man by that point.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

It sucks that we don't know exactly how much Stan and Steve each contributed to Spider-Man since they're both dead (and it's not like they were disclosing much information on what it was like working together even prior to their deaths), but thinking of Ditko as almost the sole creator of Spider-Man with Stan just adding in some dialogue feels...weird. I'm guessing it's because so much of Modern Spider-Man feels like the opposite of the kind of person Ditko seemed to be, even if we give him the benefit of the doubt that he wasn't some hardcore Randian and uncompromiser. When I look at the entire Spider-Man Canon as a whole, I don't know if I see more Ditko than Lee.

If we are to treat comics characters as works of literature (which is debatable) then the creator's actual intentions and ideas, or our conception of who these creators are in real life (conceptions which are always subject to change because new information and tidbits will leak out especially when they are long-lived and recently departed), ultimately don't count for much. There's this famous argument in literary studies callled "death of the author" which argues that when writers engage in the act of writing they lose control of some part of their intentions and that a lot of what is written down cannot be said to completely reflect the intentions of the creators. This is again dubious because literary criticism always took for granted and engaged with the idea of a single writer doing a specific work, i.e. there's no debate that Arthur Conan Doyle didn't write the Sherlock Holmes stories. Modern serial fiction with multiple authors and creative teams don't really have any literary theory dedicated to how we should make sense of it.

Fundamentally though neither Ditko nor Lee intended Spider-Man/Peter Parker to be a character through which they express themselves. They wanted him to be a popular adventure hero. So their own intentions ultimately have less to do with Spider-Man than the reception and reactions the characters got in turn.

I mean, I look at that picture in your opening post and I see more of the quiet Peter from high school than the Peter that became more outgoing and started to look and dress like James Dean. And when I read about Dikto's life prior to his death (alone/unmarried, a recluse, etc.), it makes Modern Peter Parker look like he is living the dream, even by Post-OMD standards.

Ditko like many great artists/creators are perfectly capable of dreaming up creations who aren't themselves or reflective of their life experiences. Bill Finger, an extremely shy and timid working-class Jewish guy insisted that Batman be Bruce Wayne, a patrician WASP and a master detective because to him that's what power and privilege signified realistically for an individual to have the resources to become Batman. Finger couldn't realistically imagine someone of his own class and ethnicity, not in the 1930s, becoming a crimefighting vigilante with money. Between Spider-Man and Doctor Strange, the latter reflects aspects of Ditko more than Peter does. For one thing there's the name - Stephen Strange. Ditko's full name is Stephen John Ditko. And Doctor Strange is a dude who lives most of his life alone in an apartment in New York while using his mental powers to investigate strange realms while consulting weird books. That's how Ditko lived and worked, people who knew him reported that his apartment was full of reference books (anything with images for costumes, sets, props, locations and so on) and when he needed to draw stuff he'd pop stuff open to know what a particular detail looks like and consult different stuff to put it together.

You can maybe understand Peter Parker as an idealized expression of who he was as a younger guy while Doctor Strange is an idealized expression closer to who Ditko was and ultimately became. Doctor Strange is the private anonymous guy who secretly unknown to practically anyone is saving the world and battling demons in his mind every night which works as a metaphor for Ditko's Randian interpretation. Rand prescribed both isolation from society and moral righteousness. It also works as a professional metaphor for the life of the artist...with Strange's bohemian residence (in Greenwich Village) working in that light. Ditko was quite a good and fairly well liked student in high school and in the School of Visual Arts (where he studied under Joker's creator Jerry Robinson) so his own school life was actually quite a bit better than Peter's.

If you look at Stan Lee's life and compare that to Peter Parker's the wide gap is even more jarring. For instance, when Stan Lee's mother died, his father wanted to live alone and refused to allow Larry Leiber (Stanley's younger brother) to stay with him. Which meant that 16 year old Larry had to live with his older married big brother and his wife. And Stan and Joan generally were poor hosts to Larry (Stan was certainly not "my brother's keeper") and ultimately Larry had to live with his cousins. So Stan Lee himself never followed or upheld the familial obligation and responsibility that is at the center of Spider-Man's story. Throughout his life when Stan Lee referred to family he only talked of himself, his wife and his daughter and never acknowledged his younger brother as family. Larry Leiber for instance still lives in a studio apartment in NYC that he bought in the '60s. (Seriously the Larry Leiber stuff is the most heartbreaking in the Lee biography). When Stan Lee was put into an "Uncle Ben" situation, he basically shrugged. Mark Evanier in the book is quoted by Riesman noting that Lee himself in all his life never lived up to the idea of "with great power comes great responsibility" and that's typical, I mean Charles Dickens wrote a lot of humanist sentiment and ideas he never entirely practised.

There are some correspondences between Lee's life and the story of Spider-Man. Stan Lee's difficult relationship with his father who saw him as a disappointment has an echo in Norman and Harry Osborn, with Harry Osborn being Stan Lee. Harry is the insecure kid guilty about how his life is shaped by nepotism while being in his dad's shadow. For Stan it was more that his father was conservative and was also proudly Jewish and Lee wanted to assimilate into American society. Then in the case of Gwen Stacy, her relationship with her father George, where she's basically this doting daughter who her father gives the world to is an echo of Lee's own relationship with his daughter JC who he spoiled rotten and doted on too much (ultimately to her detriment and his). Most of the Lee-Romita run subplots is about Gwen and her Dad and Harry and his Dad so that's more reflective of Stan than Peter is. It's always a mistake to assume that the main protagonist is the one closest to the author and I think the importance of expanding the supporting cast which happened in the Lee-Romita era was borne from the fact that Lee, who had to take more writing duties after Ditko left, would have found it hard to completely relate to Peter by himself. So Harry Osborn especially in the Drug-Trilogy is closer to who Stan is I would think. Like Harry, Stan owed most of his life to family connections and nepotism, he got a job at Marvel because he was a nephew (albeit a distant one) to Martin Goodman, company founder. Family connections was what allowed to him to work there for so long.