Portrait of Stan Lee wearing tinted aviator glasses and a white collared shirt.

Stan Lee

2018tribute / catchphraseclassic

Published September 28, 2026

Stan Lee, the co-creator of Marvel's most iconic superheroes, became the subject of a mass online tribute after his death at age 95 on November 12, 2018. Fans across Twitter, Reddit and YouTube posted reaction images, memorial edits and clips of his 'Excelsior!' catchphrase, spawning one of the largest coordinated mourning waves in comic book fandom history.

marvel death hoax tragedy memes catchphrase memes celebrity reaction memes 2018 memes

Overview

Stan Lee (born Stanley Lieber) worked as a writer and Editor-in-Chief at Marvel Comics, where he co-created Spider-Man, the X-Men, Iron Man, Thor, Daredevil, the Hulk, the Fantastic Four and the Avengers3. Online, his image circulated for years as a shorthand for comics fandom, but the meme wave peaked with his death on November 12, 20181.

The tribute format usually pairs a photograph of Lee, or a screenshot from one of his Marvel Cinematic Universe cameos, with his catchphrase 'Excelsior!' or a farewell caption2. Urban Dictionary entries from the week of his death called him 'the greatest motherfucker to ever live' and placed him 'with the likes of Bob Ross in mega ultra heaven,' a template later reused for other celebrity deaths9.

Origin & Background

Platform
Twitter / Reddit (viral spread)
Date
2018

Lee was rushed to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles on November 12, 2018, and pronounced dead at age 953. Within hours, Twitter published a curated Moments page titled 'Stan Lee dead at 95' collecting posts from fans, celebrities and Marvel talent1.

Because Lee had cameoed in nearly every Marvel Studios film since 2008, editors quickly cut compilation reels; the Comicbook.com YouTube channel uploaded a photo-and-cameo montage the same day2.

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How It Spread

On November 12, 2018, tribute threads hit the front page of r/news4, r/marvelstudios5, r/movies7 and r/marvel8 within hours of the announcement. Reddit users cross-posted the Comicbook.com montage and screenshotted every MCU cameo, while Twitter's Moments page aggregated posts from Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans and Marvel's official account1.

YouTube tribute edits, set to orchestral MCU scores, drew millions of combined views in the following weeks2. Urban Dictionary saw a spike of user-submitted definitions treating 'Stan Lee' as slang for a beloved elder creator, with entries dated to the week of his death9.

The tribute wave kept surfacing across 2019 as games and shows added their own nods. In January 2019, Blizzard patched World of Warcraft with an NPC named 'Stanley' who shouts 'Excelsior!' in the Stormwind Throne Room, spotted and shared by Wowhead in a widely retweeted post6.

Timeline

2018-11-12

Stan Lee dies at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center at age 95; Twitter publishes a 'Stan Lee dead at 95' Moments page the same day[1].

2018-11-12

Tribute threads reach the front page of r/news, r/marvelstudios, r/movies and r/marvel[4][5].

2018-11-12

Comicbook.com uploads a photo-and-cameo montage tribute to YouTube[2].

2019-01-10

Wowhead tweets that Blizzard added a 'Stanley' NPC to World of Warcraft's Stormwind Throne Room, exclaiming 'Excelsior!'[6].

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