Kirby and Ditko both felt resentful that Stan Lee became the face of Marvel Comics and both accused him of taking credit for their work, claims which are the source of considerable controversy among fans and historians.
What is clear is that more often than not, Ditko and Kirby were plotting their own stories for Stan well before the so-called Marvel Method kicked in. And more importantly, both became obsessed with the idea of alternate dimensions, even before their work took on a more explicit psychedelic bent.
If you take a High Weirdness approach to creativity, you see strange entities lurking in corners behind the work of great artists (Max Ernst is a perfect example of this). This applies to the sciences as well as the arts, as inconvenient as it may be to the plodders and mediocrities that populate organized skepticism.
On some strange level, visionaries often hear the call of beings outside space and time. How they choose to respond to that call is another question. And you can find no better example of opposite reactions than those of Steve Ditko and Jack Kirby...
