Calgary Expo 2017: Stan Lee & Todd McFarlane Panel

A day after having his own panel, Todd McFarlane once again jumped into another, but joined with his long time friend Stan Lee. You could immediately tell that there was chemistry between the two with Stan Lee taking a strong presence, but McFarlane keeping it all focused and streamlined. It was a very entertaining panel that basically packed the venue and now I'll go over some of the discussed details and interesting bits from it.

The panel opened with an intense video that went over the career of Stan Lee and like with yesterday's panel it helped bring hype. The first story they went over was when McFarlane met Stan Lee at the age of 16, this was quite a long time ago and apparently as a way to help him learn about comics he was allowed to sit in at a meeting. Lee does not remember this event like many other happenings due to age, which is fine as it's amazing he's able to be so mobile. I also have a note down that states, "these two are awesome", which they were.

There was another fine point that came up of how Stan Lee got into comics, at a young age he was looking for a job. His distant cousin was working at a publishing company and the comics department was looking for an assistant. He got sent to the place where he met Simon and Kirby, which many comic fans should know.

They were small time with only a guy named Captain America and he didn't do much there aside from erase pencil marks. One day his two colleagues didn't show for whatever reason that he still doesn't know and he became the comic department. From that point he started creating comics as someone had to do it and things went from there. It's also worth noting that his first character was "The Destroyed" but he doesn't remember anything about it.

Cameos
We love Stan Lee for his cameos and those were obviously went over during the panel in great depth. His grand reasoning for the cameos being great is that he is great so therefore the cameos are. They require intense talent, as few can capture the quiet guy in the background like he can. At some point doing the cameos became a contest for directors from his first in X-Men to Raimi wanting to outdo the previously director in his Spiderman series and thus the cameo career was born.

Spawn Movie Tease
While the day previous we got exciting exclusives which you can read below, there were also talks about a Stan Lee cameo. Lee also mentioned he would love to do this and the example we got was as follows. Spawn crashes into an apartment and there's an old guy in a wife beater. Black n' White TV is playing with snow and rabbits, he hasn't shaved for five days. He yells, get out of the way I'm watching Hitchcock, why does that ego have to be in every one of his movies anyways?

This is a jab at Stan Lee being in a cameo for all of the Marvel films and it would be funny to watch. It's also a comment on Alfred Hitchcock that appeared in many of his films. The final cameo tease was that a big secret will be revealed with Stan Lee's Guardians of the Galaxy 2 cameo and I personally look forward to the early screening I'm attending for that. It could very well reveal that he is "The Watcher", but we'll have to see. I hope that sums up the panel well and you can read more of our coverage from that event in the hub below. A special thanks to the create photography work from Ken Appleby.

Our Calgary Expo 2017 Hub
Our Coverage on the Todd McFarlane Solo Panel