From Excelsior! The Amazing Life of Stan Lee (2002), by Stan Lee and George Mair:

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Lee:  I’m willing to say so.
Ross:  But that’s not what I’m asking you.
Lee:  No, and that’s the best answer I can give you.
Ross:  So it’s a “no” then?
Lee:  I really think the guy who dreams the thing up created it!  You dream it up, and then you give it to anybody to draw it.
Ross:  But if it’d been drawn differently, it might not’ve been successful, or a hit.

That kinda lingo is what confuses things for some people, 

Writing the story, developing the character in the context of said story and visually defining what he looks like are.

If not, the ideal thing would be throwing as much names and powers as humanly possible at the wall, it's almost a childlike reasoning.

Which is the thing about Stan's stance that I just can't agree with.  The popularity of these characters does depend heavily on their appearance.  It's a visual medium after all.

"I'm happy to say I consider Steve to be the co-creator" is basically saying "I know that I'm really the creator, but I'm willing to say it this way to placate Steve and the fans."

Part 2 has the reaction of Len Wein's widow, with the Herb Trimpe quote. LINK. Trimpe might have been in the office when the assignment was given, but he had no way of knowing what kind of research Wein did for it.

There are two aspects to Stan Lee's position on Spider-Man. The first is that without Steve Ditko, the character as we know it would never have existed; but without Stan Lee's initial idea, the character would never have existed at all. The second, crucial to the first, is that Stan Lee claims "I’m the guy who dreamed up the title, the concept, and the characters," which is considerably more than (as you had put it, Jason) a "sparse" "original idea." One surely could challenge both aspects, but that doesn't mean Stan Lee's intent in honestly expressing his opinion was to be deprecating and ignoble.

Trimpe's verbatim words: "“I was in the office a good part of the time and I was there when John was working on the model for the character. The way it worked was Roy Thomas came up with a concept. It was his. He came up with the name of the character Wolverine and he handed it directly over to John Romita in the bullpen to develop a character sheet, which he gave to Len Wein, who was the writer at the time.”

In this sequence of events that Trimpe is providing first-hand evidence on, where does Wein's purported research fit in?

Trimpe is saying there is a sequence of:

No character ----> Name and rough concept given to Romita -----> Name and design given to Wein ------> First story with Wolverine

Trimpe himself was the one guy intimately involved who didn't ask for any credit and I have no reason to doubt anything he said on the matter.

Thomas didn't contribute much really, but from what Trimpe says it's still hard to see how Disney, having looked into the matter of credit, will reverse their decision.

I also think there is a fair amount of special pleading in what Christine Valada is saying. On the one had she tells us Len "always called himself the writer-creator, as distinct from the artist-creator" but then claims Wein contributed to Romita's design. No one there at the time has suggested this, but now -- in an interview where she talks about stolen valour -- she floats the idea that Wein actually did someone of the design work.

Does anyone know if Incredible Hulks 180 and 181 were done via the Marvel Method?

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Seriously. do you need to be a dick about it?

It was a bad link and has been fixed