Stan Lee was a large influence on my life through the characters he created at Marvel: Iron Man, Fantastic Four, Incredible Hulk, Spiderman… I mean pretty much all of them were designed by him.

I was fortunate to get to meet Stan Lee a few years ago before he passed. I sat right next to him, and he said “You know why I used the word “Excelsior” at the end of all my letters?”

“It was because I found that the competition was always imitating my sign offs and using them. So, I said I’m going to get one expression that they’re not going to know what it means, and they won’t know how to spell it!”

I just loved that. The man was a pioneer in so many ways. I’m sad he passed away, but I recently decided that I would sign off my emails with Excelsior!