Attention, fanboys: Fan Expo Canada has announced that Stan Lee’s bow at the September event in Toronto will officially be the Marvel Comics legend’s last Canadian appearance.

We’re assured the 93-year-old creator of X-Men, Spider-Man, Iron Man, et al. is in good health. Indeed, he makes for a lively Postmedia Network exclusive phone interview, talking from Los Angeles about his farewell tour.

I open by telling him that this 57-year-old bought his first Marvel Comic — The Incredible Hulk — at age seven. Which means he’s influenced me for a half-century.

“I’m happy to take all the credit for that, but none of the blame,” he says.

Why is this your last visit to Canada? Did we do something to upset you?

“I want to make it dramatic and not just another visit. If it’s my last one, it means something.”

But why do you not want to do it anymore?

“It’s so pleasant to go somewhere where people like you and want to hear what you have to say. It’s very flattering. But I’m 93 years old. I don’t know how much longer I’ll be able to do it. I want to make this one big event.”

You don’t strike me as slowing down.

“Well, I can’t run the marathon and win the way I used to.”

Do you remember the first time it occurred to you that you were a celebrity?

“It was years ago in the ’60s. I used to get a lot of fan mail, but no fan had ever approached me in person. One day, I was outside the building and some fans came over to me. And when this guy ran across the street and said, ‘Hey, you’re Stan Lee! I read all your stuff!’ That’s when I first realized somebody knows me.”

That must have been a revelation. People always toiled in anonymity in comics.

“Yeah, I tried to change that. We were the first company where I put everybody’s name on every strip. I put the artist’s name. I put the letterer’s name. Sometimes I’d put the colourer’s name. I thought we shouldn’t have that anonymity any more than movie stars have it.”

Jack Kirby … Steve Ditko … definitely stars.

“It was always ‘By Stan Lee & Jack Kirby, Stan Lee and Steve Ditko, Stan Lee and John Romita, whoever.’ ”

People always say they don’t play favourites, but I have to think Captain America is close to your heart because you worked on him before Marvel (the company was first known as Timely Comics and later as Atlas Comics).

“Yeah, the pre-Marvel days, when I first came to work there. I was a teenager, and whenever I started there, a year later (1941) I was working on Captain America. Jack Kirby and Joe Simon had been doing Captain America, and they had me write some.

Cap was always so important to me, because he was my first, even though I didn’t create him.”

But you shaped the Cap we know today.

“What happened was we had dropped him for years. And I thought I would bring him back and make him feel a little bit lost, because he had been frozen in the ice for 20 or 25 years. And he was coming into a world that he wasn’t familiar with. Hippies and things he had never experienced. I enjoyed writing him as a man out of time.”

And now Spider-Man is being introduced to Captain America in a movie (Captain America: Civil War). Two of your signature guys.

“Well, Spider-Man of course is probably the most famous, and I guess I love him the most. He’s the one that’s closest to my heart, really.”

People always talk about “the Marvel universe.” Did you know back then you were creating a universe?

“I didn’t know. I never thought of it that way. Every time I’d go home, I had another story to write. So I usually wrote another story about Dr. Strange or The Hulk or The X-Men. As far as it being a universe, I think it was the fans that started referring to it as that. I just thought of it as separate stories. And then of course, I decided to put the characters together; and I formed The Avengers. But to me they were still separate stories that I had to write every month.”

It’s a thing now that every Marvel movie has a Stan Lee cameo. What’s your favourite cameo?

“I think it’s the one I just did, Deadpool, where I’m the disc jockey at a strip club. My favourite non-Marvel one was The Big Bang Theory.”

Excelsior! It’s your motto, and it’s also the state motto of New York. Have they ever complained?

“No. As a matter of fact, the state attorney of Rhode Island had Excelsior put on his door and had me come and pose for a picture in front of it.

“Excelsior is a great word. It means, ‘Upward and onward to greater triumph.’ I realized at one point that some of our competitors were starting to use phrases that I’d been using, like, ‘Nuff said.’

“And I said, ‘I’m going to find something they won’t copy, ’cause they won’t even know what it means.’ ”

Twitter: @jimslotek

jim.slotek@sunmedia.ca