EXCELSIOR!! STAN LEE TRUE BELIEVER PANEL

So instead we headed to the Stan Lee True Believer panel where Stan the Man talked about a new documentary about his life and work. He was accompanied by legendary artist Dick Ayers, Paul Levitz head of DC, X-Men/Transformers producer Tom Desanto and Michael Uslan Executive Producer of Dark Knight and The Spirit. It was a great junket, Stan was hilarious and I swear he has 10 times more energy than either of us and he's like 50-60 years older, so that's just sad. Stan talked about the early days of Marvel and where Excelsior! came from, "years ago I used to write this column Stan's Soapbox and I would end every column with some sort of stupid phrase like Face-Front!, or Hang Loose! anything I could think of, and some how or another...Nuff Said... I would see those expressions cropping up in the DC books, they were called the National Books at the time. So I said to myself I've got to come up with some sort of expression where A they won't know what it means and B they won't know how to spell it.. so I got Excelsior, and I hope I'm not jinxing myself by saying this because I might start seeing it crop up now, but until now excelsior has been ours alone!"
Paul Levitz answered a question about killing off comic characters and bringing them back to life, "I always thought the rule was if you show the dead body you weren't allowed to bring them back, but if you didn't show the body then you can play any trick you can come up with as a writer" Then Stan Lee expressed, "A comic book writer is like God, because who else can say, 'gee I killed that character last issue, I think I'll bring them back to life!' Its the most amazing feeling! You can kill someone, bring them back to life, you can wound them and then in the next panel their wound is miraculously healed you can do anything when you write comics, in fact I'm beginning to wonder if there is something a little bit God like about us? (Stan looks at the rest of the panel) I said US! I don't want to monopolize it all!"


Then we heard about Stan Lee at Carnegie Hall "Would you like to be in Carnegie Hall? and so I thought it was a joke, but he actually paid, he hired the hall and he put together some kind of little show. and I couldn't believe it, I was walking down 57Th street, in front of Carnegie Hall and There's a big sign, 'Tonight Stan Lee and Marvel', 'A day With Stan' whatever it was called, and it was a nonsensical show because we had nothing planned it was almost like this, but we got up there and we talked and kidded around and Roy Thomas was there and I think we had a band of people who were in comics, and people talked about comics and it was a crazy evening, and it was standing room only that's the funny thing, there were people standing around the aisles so I said to myself this is such a big success it will probably go on, it will be the longest running show, the next day they had something else and we were never invited back, but I had my one day at Carnegie Hall."
Stan talked about his cameos "obviously when a producer wants to make sure his movie will be a hit, Hey! let's have Stan do a cameo!...it's obvious" Then Stan described his new cameo on Iron Man, "I do a scene where I'm with 3 gorgeous blonde's, and Robert Downey walks over behind me and taps me on the shoulder and I have a few lines to say with Robert Downey!" For a video of this CLICK HERE Who knows who the 3 blonde's are but we here at Geek World bet it will be Hugh Hefner's Girls Next Door Holly, Bridgette and Kendra.


Then they showed a 9 min clip from the documentary, that had interviews with guys like Joe Quesada, Todd Mcfarlane, Nicolas Cage, and unfortunately Brett Ratner, and confusingly Paris Hilton saying "Stan's Hot". Everyone pretty much said the same thing that we all already know, comics as we know them today are because of the work of Stan Lee. However it looks like a really cool doc that we'll definitely check out when it drops (do DVD's drop? or just albums?).


After the clip Stan talked about his new projects through his company POW! "It has a exclamation point so it doesn't look like prisoner of war" entertainment including one with Paris where he said "I'm working on a project with Paris Hilton obviously with her it's a very refined, intellectual, philosophical.. no its a cartoon series...and it's going to be very funny and she's quite good, obviously she just does a voice, but her voice is good, for the character we portray, which is her, she can do her very well!" the crowd laughed and overall it was a fun time. We have video of the clip HERE


Michael Uslan announced that their shortly going to start principle photography on the Frank Miller written and directed movie of Will Eisners The Spirit , and Tom Desanto confirmed a Transformers sequel in the works as well as a City of Heroes (a popular PC game) live action pic. Michael Uslan then said about the Dark Knight shooting in Chicago, "Stan promised me if I talked the directors into letting him do a cameo it will guarantee at least another $100 million in the box office... I don't know if I can get Chris to do it but I'm working on it Stan."


The panel was great and there's no doubt why his nickname is "The Man". We then went on a quest for free stuff and to see all the wackiness on the floor.

--Dave