Excelsior!

Excelsior, a word, in Latin, meaning Upward and onward to greater glory!

Today, the word which has been burned into the lexicon of anyone who's ever been lucky enough to pick up a Marvel comic book over the last 57 years, carries a whole new weight.

Stan Lee, the creator of more iconic Marvel characters than one can shake an uru hammer at, has passed away, at the age of 95.

So Face Front, True Believers, this is one comic book fan's feeble attempt at encapsulating the difference that one writer and imagineer made in the lives of so many.

On Monday, Twitter was afire with the news of his passing, with Stan-related tweets dominating tweet feeds, and claiming top berth on the top trending twitter topics for much of the day. 

Stan "The Man" Lee, Jack "The King" Kirby and Steve Ditko created the pantheon of Marvel comic superheroes, most of which form the backbone today of the Marvel Universe movies - Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four, the X-Men, Thor, Hulk, Iron Man, Doctor Strange, the Black Panther, and of course, this writer's personal favorite, the Avengers.

Regular readers of this blog know that me personally, growing up, reading comic books was my favorite pastime.  In fact, I literally learned HOW to read via comic books.

I would spend hours in our first-floor apartment on Gates Street poring over every issue, with the Fantastic Four, Amazing Spider-Man, Thor and Avengers topping that reading list.

As a result, I was probably the only four-year-old on my block who could use words like phantasmagorical, macabre, Nuff Said, and of course, Excelsior in a sentence.  And yea, verily, don't get me started on my mastery of the Norse language thanks to Stan and Jack's tales of Asgard.  I can name the Nine Realms, and the entire Norse pantheon of Gods thanks to Stan and Jack.
Stan's scripting would stoke the fire of imagination in my young, impressionable mind, always inspiring me to dream big, but stay grounded.

Stan's words filling the panel of the first appearance ever of Spider-Man in Amazing Fantasy 15 have become permanently engraved as some of the most inspirational and humbling teachings that personify Lee's common-man approach to the world of super-heroes, in particular, that of his seminal creation, Spider-Man.

He was a man of many uniforms - as his Fantastic Four creation mailman Willie Lumpkin in 2005's FF flick

And even more important, as a World War II U.S. Army lineman in the Signal Corps, enlisting right after the 1941 attack on our nation at Pearl Harbor.  The U.S. Army official twitter account, in fact, joined the scores of fans tweeting out their appreciation to Stan on Monday. 

As a child, I didn't understand release dates, and distribution cycles and the like.  All I knew is that every week, someone in my family, usually my mother, would take me for a walk to any one in a series of local shops - Palmer News on Appleton Street, Mickey's Variety in Lincoln Square, Teddy's Variety in Cupples Square, or Chuck's Variety on School Street to pick up the latest titles.  Harvey's Bookland on Central Street was the place for back issues, of course.

What does it say that I can literally remember the day, the walks, the experiences that came with the purchase of some of the following issues? 

Am I a geek? Absolutely, and an unabashed one at that.

It was because of comic books I developed a passion for writing.

My son, Andrew, grew up, believing he could one day be the everyman hero, Spider-Man.  I still remember our first trip to New York City, when a young Andrew scoured the skyline, hoping for a glimpse of the webslinger overhead. I remember the first comic show my cousin Bobby took me to, he who bequeathed to the five-year-old me many of my first issues of Fantastic Four.

It was directly because of comic books I first met a whole cast of fellow Avengers throughout my life, including Mike Cassidy, a friend since 1973 and over subsequent decades, his entire family, the entire extended Vergados Clan, Larry Doherty and his extended mint collection of fellow comic-fans too numerous to mention, stand-up comic book Benari Poulten,  real-life Captain America Nick Laganas, and my little buddy, Yandel Hernandez, who has grown up idolizing the Marvel heroes.

During the course of the night, in fact, Yandel, now an 11--year-old fan of all things Marvel, had been reduced to tears with the news of Stan's passing.  I chatted with him on the phone for a bit about Stan's legacy, and how his work, and the characters he created, were going to live on for decades and decades to come.  Yandel knows Stan best from the score of cameos Stan has had in just about every big screen Marvel movie to date.

Yandel just wanted to talk comic books and Marvel movies with anyone who wanted to share his passion for wonderment and sheer, unbridled joy at the adventures that comic books, and in particular, their mastermind, Stan Lee, had brought into his life.  I know just how you feel, Yandel.

When it comes to comic books, and promoting the four-color titles that provided the backdrop to so many millions of comic readers and movie-goers lives, Stan Lee was THE MAN.

'Nuff Said.