Spider-Man Star Tom Holland: I’m “Indebted” to Stan Lee

Tom Holland has shared a tribute to late Spider-Man co-creator Stan Lee, who died Monday aged 95.

“How many millions of us are indebted to this guy, none more so than me,” the Spider-Man star wrote in an Instagram post, accompanied by a photo of Holland and Lee captured during the Spider-Man: Homecoming press tour.

“The father of Marvel has made so many people so incredibly happy. What a life and what a thing to have achieved. Rest in peace Stan.”

In May, Lee hailed Holland as “a great Spider-Man,” writing on Twitter, “He is the exact height and age I envisioned when I first wrote Spider-Man. Spidey was never supposed to be too large.”

Lee co-created Marvel’s flagship superhero with Steve Ditko, who died in June aged 90.

Lee, who would later collaborate with Ditko on Doctor Strange, forged ahead with then-teenaged superhero Spider-Man despite a publisher warning him such a character would be “the worst idea.”

“My publisher said, in his ultimate wisdom, ‘Stan, that is the worst idea I have ever heard,’” Lee told the BBC Radio 4 in 2015.

“‘First of all, people hate spiders, so you can’t call a book Spider-Man,’” Lee remembered. “‘Secondly he can’t be a teenager — teenagers can only be sidekicks. And third, he can’t have personal problems if he’s supposed to be a superhero — don’t you know who a superhero is?’”

After publisher Martin Goodman allowed Lee and Ditko to premiere the character in the soon-to-be-shuttered Amazing Fantasy, Spider-Man swiftly proved a hit, spinning out into his eponymous series seven months later.

“I couldn’t think of any new super power. And then I saw a fly crawling on a wall. And I said, ‘Boy, it would be great if I could get a superhero who could stick to walls like an insect,’” Lee recounted to the NY Daily News in 2012 of the inspiration behind the wall-crawling superhero.

After dismissing codenames “Insect Man,” “Stick-to-Wall Man,” and “Mosquito Man,” Lee said, “I thought of Spider-Man, and that sounded scary and dramatic — and as we often say, the rest is history.”

Commenting on Ditko’s death in July, Lee remembered Ditko as “one of the most important creators in the comic book business” who possessed an “indescribable” talent.

“You made a real impression here in the world,” Lee said in a video published to his Twitter account. “Excelsior.”

Holland next returns as Peter Parker-slash-Spider-Man in Avengers 4, out May 3, and Spider-Man: Far From Home, out July 5, 2019.