December 3, 2006

  • I attended "the Hero Initiative's" charity event featuring Stan Lee, Joe Quesada, and host Kevin Smith, talking about Marvel comics "then and now." It was at the Ackerman Grand Ballroom on the UCLA campus. I heard about this event through The Kevin & Bean show on KROQ Los Angeles, and ofcourse the main person I wanted to see is Kevin Smith.
    UCLA btw has a very nice campus.

    The event itself is simply a discussion session between Lee, Quesada, and Smith. Kevin Smith ofcourse never shys from his profanity laden humor and he did not disappoint. Stan Lee himself was no slouch in the humor department, and Joe Quesada was able to make with the funny once in a while. Just hearing the three of them have a conversation, poking fun at each other, was very entertaining and justified the whole night.

    Kevin Smith used his brand of humor to some of the Marvel characters, and even joked about how Captain America promoted using drugs as a positive thing, because that's how he got his powers. They also poked fun at the competition in DC comics, which produced some good laughs. There were some technical difficulties with microphone feedbacks that were amusing at how distracting it was to us and to them, to the point that they kept shifting back and forth trying to figure out how to remedy it, while at the same time keeping up with what they were discussing.

    There was one unbelievable moment when Stan Lee was staring a full minute or so at Kevin Smith, thinking he was talking, when it turned out it was actually Joe Quesada whose voice is coming out from the speakers. As Kevin Smith pointed out, "couldn't you see that my mouth wasn't even moving with the voice?" and it turned out that the spot lights were so bright on them that Stan Lee couldn't tell. He does this at least two more times, to our amusement.

    There were a couple of Marvel related surprises that night with the guest appearance of Reginald Hudlin (writer/director of House Party, and writer of the Black Panther), as well as Tom DeSanto (responsible for the X-Men movies) who showed up and auctioned off a signed X-Men poster for charity. The winner of the poster then gave it to Stan Lee as a gift.

    The whole event lasted almost three hours, and I'll be happy to be back for the next one, if they consider doing another event like this.

Comments (1)

  • it's always cool to look at entertainment things that have deeper messages. comics are definitely one of those outlets. =)

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