How did it happen? How did I get into this? Me, a guy who's almost always written fantasy,

suddenly having to deal with facts. The facts of my life. Although come to think of it,

those facts themselves are pretty fantastic. If I hadn't lived the whole thing, I might not even believe it.

During those strange struggling early years, I wallowed an embarrassment because I was a mere comic book writer and now because of those same humble comic books here I am the featured star of a real grown-up book, the hero of my own life story.

There's probably a moral hidden there.

Feel free to search for it as we roll along.

To tell the truth, I can't wait to read the pages that follow

since so much of the past has managed to homogenize in the plot cluttered

recesses of my mind. It's a chance to rediscover little truths about my own

inscrutable self and the titanically talented people I've worked with. Here are a

couple sentences I wrote some years ago to describe my feelings about what Marvel Comics represents.

Marvel is a cornucopia of fantasy, a wild idea, a swashbuckling attitude, an escape from the humdrum and the prosaic.

It's a serendipitous feast for the mind, the eye, and the imagination.

A literate celebration of unbridled creativity coupled with a touch of rebellion and an insolent

desire to spit in the eye of the dragon.

There you have it, my take on Marvel and the fantasy genre in general, and perhaps my own philosophy in particular if those words strike

a chord with you read on if they don't I'd rather not know.

Okay, that was an excerpt from the book that I want to talk to you about today, and that is Excelsior, The Amazing Life of Stan Lee.

And I guess I'll just jump ahead before I jump back into the book because that's a bizarre word right like the title of the book.

I don't know if I've ever seen that word anywhere else and so I looked it up and he talks about it later on in the book, but there's two things.

First I want to tell you the definition. Second, he has a really great idea right off the bat.

And he decided to make the word Excelsior, which means ever upward, his life motto.

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