Stan Lee was really great. And the comic book is a valid art form. There's skill in the writing - drama, theme, and characterization that Lee brought, but there's also a real skill in the artwork - not only the pictures themselves, but the layouts of the stories themselves. A single panel or a group of panels together done right can tell you everything about what a character is going through, and pace a story. This is a fun exercise - look through an old comic book and see if you can follow the story without the words. In the best comics, this is possible. In other words, when the words augment a story, but the story doesn't depend on the words, you know the comic is great.