Legendary comic book creator Stan Lee is forever immortalized through his work and the pop culture icons he helped create, not to mention his entertaining cameos in various comic book movies. Now the Marvel icon will be immortalized and remembered in another way. In a week where Stan Lee’s co-creation Spider-Man had a movie cross $1 billion at the box office, Stan Lee has been given his own street in The Bronx.
According to the New York Post, on Tuesday the New York City Council voted to approve a proposal to name a street in the Bronx after the late Stan Lee, who passed away last November at the age of 95. Under the bill proposed by Council Member Fernando Cabrera, University Avenue between Brandt Place and West 176th Street will be co-named “Stan Lee Way” to honor the Marvel legend.
The proposal is part of a bill to codify 85 other honorary street names. Now that it has passed the City Council, the proposal goes to New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio’s desk where it will await his signature to become official.
You’ll often see streets, buildings and other public places named after people that had nothing whatsoever to do with those places, but that’s not the case here. Like Peter Parker, Stan Lee was a native New Yorker, so this isn’t just an attempt by Fernando Cabrera to lock up the critical comic book nerd vote.
Stan Lee grew up in New York and lived in an apartment in the borough at 1720 University Place. He also went to DeWitt Clinton High School in The Bronx. So the proposal memorializes a native son of The Bronx in the place where he grew up.
For someone who was so influential and beloved and brought entertainment and joy to people the world over to be memorialized in his hometown feels right. I also really like that they went with Stan Lee Way as opposed to ‘Stan Lee Road’ or ‘Stan Lee Street’. Stan Lee Way just sounds better and has a secondary meaning honoring the way Stan Lee lived his life.
This is now just another way Stan Lee will live on, along with the characters he created and the lives they touched. Stan Lee appeared in his final Marvel cameo in this year’s Avengers: Endgame but that’s far from the end of him appearing on our screens in some fashion.
Stan Lee will get an on-screen tribute as well as recognition in the credits in Kevin Smith’s Jay and Silent Bob Reboot. There is also a new cartoon called The Amazing Stan, which imagines a young Stan Lee in the modern times and what the world would look like through his eyes. In addition, The Russo Brothers have talked about developing a Stan Lee documentary. So Stan’s memory and influence won’t be fading anytime soon.
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