Ben, I've always been under the impression that that was kind of the straw that broke the camel's back. There had been tensions building for sometime between Ditko and Stan.

Ben, that's the legend, but that doesn't gibe with behind the scenes reports that Stan and Steve had barely spoken in the year or so prior to his departure from the book and that Stan scripted straight from the art rather than having plot conferences beforehand from since before the time Ditko got the "Plotted and Drawn" credit in the mid 20s.  (In case you ever wondered why the Master Planner's men said that they worked for the Cat in ASM #30, among other "glitches.")

In an article he wrote for a fanzine called The Comics, Ditko himself denied it, pointing to some things he had Norman do in his last couple of issues as evidence.

Ditko. Spider-Man is fantasy and Romita doesn't pull it off quite as well.

Then there are those crazy Spidey body and finger contortions, the imaginary half-Spidey face, the spider-sense tingling lines, the water towers, the innovative super-villain designs. Romita's Green Goblin is not nearly as menacing as Ditko's. Ditko's Kraven and Mysterio are fascinating to look at. Romita's Mysterio merely puts the same costume artifacts on Mysterio's costume, Ditko made those artifacts coherent.

I believe Ditko put so much of his personal, inner vision into the character and its universe, that anyone else is an also-ran. Poverty, for example, is a recurring theme, especially in the Aunt May depictions. I believe Ditko had some life experiences with that there and it showed through in the way Peter was constantly struhhling to make ends meet.

The same thing could be said of Dr. Strange. Most of the artists that immediately followed Ditko on Dr. Strange delivered beautiful work: it just wasn't Dr. Strange, it was just a well-drawn character that happened to dress like Dr. Strange.

That being said, Romita's Peter Parker was very cool. Much cooler than Ditko's. But the book is about Spider-Man, not Spider-Parker.

1. Steve Ditko

   I was never familiar with John Romita Sr because of my late coming into the books (Ross Andru was on ASM then).  Thus, in retrospect, I prefer Ditko because of his role at the beginning.  There seems to be a bit of a jarring transformation in how Spidey was portrayed between the two, that made the character seem "different" somehow.

   Each of them left their mark on the character, but I liked Ditko's portrayal of the young Peter Parker as the class nerd, acquiring super-powers that he first uses rather selfishly before discovering the heavy burden of responsibilities that those powers gave to him.  Sort of like Batman, but without the premeditation given to a life of crimefighting until after he is affected in a direct way (Uncle Ben being shot dead by the burglar whose crime in progress he refused to assist in stopping earlier).