It was a DC book that kicked off the Silver Age of comics with Showcase #4 in 1956. Fantastic Four #1 didn't debut until 1961 and it took more than a decade before Marvel comics sales overtook DC. Stan had given up writing full time by then. For the vast majority of his career at Marvel he essentially functioned as a brand ambassador and pitch man. US comics got stuck in a weird superhero monoculture for a couple of decades. Meanwhile over in France, Japan and Korea there was a full scale mass market comic book revolution that eclipses the US industry in scale by an order of magnitude. Stan was important for sure , but his greatest production was himself.

Coletta gets a bad rap for just doing the job that needed doing. He himself was a really accomplished inker, he taught Dick Giordano, but when other people didn't hit their deadlines , Colletta could get the book back on schedule. Often he had insanely short turnaround times. Corners were cut, quality was secondary, but the job got done. The Editors were happy. The Publisher was happy. Vinnie had a long and successful career as a fixer.

The Superhero genre perhaps, the medium would have been fine without him.