Did Stan Lee & Steve Ditko create Spider-Man? Or was the idea stolen from a Halloween costume? In the Silver Age of comics in the 1960s and 70s, things were an existential mess from a creator perspective - especially at Marvel comics. There were no artist or writer unions, characters were often created in bull pen-type situations where authorship was given to the company at large instead of the actual people doing the creating. And, in a system where creator-ship was not properly recorded, and artists were unfairly disregarded, many of the people involved in the creation of the books all have their own versions of the story. One of the most notorious examples is Spider-Man. Stan Lee claims he created the iconic wall-crawler because he thought of the name and the superpower. Steve Ditko claims he's actually a co-creator because he designed the web-slinger, drew most of the original books, and basically wrote them as well. But what if Spider-Man existed BEFORE either men created him? What if the idea was stolen from a Halloween costumed created by a different legendary comic book artist a decade prior? On this episode of Deep Cuts we explore the story, the speculation, and the enigma behind the true creator of Spider-Man.

Additional incidental music credits:

The Deadboy Detectives

D.Catalano https://wekeepoddhours.bandcamp.com

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