I totally agree. There was always a strong element of the old carny barker in Stan, the fast-talking salesman who'd tell ya whatever he thought you wanted to hear, in order to sell his product.

The difference lies, as mrp says, in the tools that were available at the time, especially if you include in the idea of "tools" the whole administrative aspect which has become much bigger and more tightly controlling. It isn't that the companies were less profit-driven back then, it's that they were less likely to micro-manage every detail of the creative aspect. It's telling that you see the editors interviewed almost as often as the writers now. I don't think that would have been the case in the 70s.

There's also the happy coincidence that the totally unforeseeable creative alchemy of artists like Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko with Stan Lee meant that instead of producing tired, note-for-note imitations of DC's superhero line, they came up with something new - in great contrast, IMO, to today's Big 2.

No doubt Stan would have been happy to produce those straight imitations if they had sold, but luckily for us, his story-telling instincts got the better of his salesman's instincts - or rather, they worked together, because what was good for the reader turned out to be good for the company too, in the long run.