Marvel then and now

by: bamf 1 year, 9 months, 3 weeks, 4 days, 19 hours, 18 minutes ago 1

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Bamf here rematerializing from the void...

This isnt my film niche but I just had to share the experience.  Im always on the lookout for cool happenings in L.A. and this was definitly one of them.  Ill keep sharing these as they happen.  But this was Marvel then and now.

I arrived and the air was thick with geek.  The crowd assembled into the Hall where a hodpodge of two sofas, a chair and a table were neatly arranged on the stage.  The formation suggested how the night would go, but by the end it reflected how it went. A sofa and chair were backwards, trash littered the meager table and a gigantic white screen hung half skewed from the ceiling in such a way that the parties leaving almost had to duck their heads to exit. 

It was a night full of distractions, disorganization and delaying diatribes but I loved it all the same.  While well intentioned, the UCLA staff put on a show that had the charm of your 4 year old cousin doing their best to entertain you with a sketch about puppets.  But you love puppets and since it’s your cousin, you don’t have to live with his annoying bumbling and can happily clap on cue and walk away briskly.  Seriously though, feedback plagued the marvels of the night and Smith was noticeably irritated.  The whole night was just not organized right ranging from a Power Point presentation that the moderator didn’t know about to no one taking in to account that Stan Lee cannot hear proper, the presentation was awful. Yet I still wanted more because the content was awesome. 

Marvel Then and Now was really all about Stan Lee as it should be. Joe Q.  was really just another voice to add comic history and general anecdotes about his past.  While Stan Lee can be completely lucid in the tales those true believers have heard a thousand times already, his age is showing and at times reminded me of my Grandpa after too many valiums.  But that’s another story and really has nothing to do with comics. 
Smith was in full Silent Bob gear sans long hair and valiantly tried to keep the show moving forward until he and Joe Q. went on and on about his Daredevil run and while interesting, at one point you got the sense that they would be having the same, albeit juicier conversation over lunch if that damn audience wasn’t there.  That all happened towards the end so we the audience were a little worse for wear so to be fair maybe the shine of it all had begun to fade. 

As I said the couches changed their configurations as the trio attempted to find a rhythm for the night and this lead to the funniest moment of the show.  Joe was on the far left, Kevin on the far right, Stan in the middle.  While Joe was talking about something Stan was staring at Kevin with a big smile on his face.  Kevin just stared back.  Then about mid sentence Joe was interrupted by Stan when he exuberantly exclaimed that he thought it was Kevin talking the whole time, but only had just realized that his lips weren’t moving.  “The Man” as they say is getting on in the years.

There were many amusing stories like the reasoning behind Thors ability to fly and how FF4 was not to have any words in it with more then two syllables. That last bit seems really silly considering the team has the worlds smartest man in it, but I digress. The “Then” of the night was mostly what’s out there already, and the “Now” seemed very lean.  Considering Joe really couldn’t say much about what was going on in the “Now” due to spoilers, he lightly touching on Civil Wars larger issues and it was nice to hear the man speak.  The biggest reveals from him for the night was that The Hulk was going to come back and kick the Illuminatis ass and that by October of next year you will see the next Spiderman “revolution” as he called it.  Joe went so far to say that Spideys next step is more of a throwback to Lee’s era.  So looking forward to that.


Surprise guests included House Party’s Reggie Hudlin (Black Panther) and Tom (I have more comics then bamf) DeSanto whom brought along a X-Men one sheet signed by the cast to be auctioned off for the charity of the night.  They started the bidding at 100, then it went to 200, then it was about to be sold to some lucky fan until the lady volunteering in the back yelled “500!” Bidding went up to 1200, well outside this geeks wallet and the guy who bought it just handed it to Stan Lee.  This whole thing makes me angry only because as I left I heard the lady whom was working the table and yelled the upstaging wager say there was no way she was going to let that poster go for 200$.  Sure it was for charity, but some fan was going to be walking off with a cool poster, instead the bidding was inflated by Hudlin and some other guy and when he received the poster he handed off to Stan like it was for an 8 year old with cancer.  Meh.  All proceeds from tix went to charity anyways so why this woman decided to steal a good bit of coolness from a normal Joe doesn’t sit right with me.  Saying it’s for charity, while noble, is like punching someone in the nuts and saying it doesn’t matter because they are sterile anyways. 
I’m bitching a lot but all and all it was an absolute treat to see these guys personally and hear the stories first hand.  Ill go again at the next opportunity.  I just want a little more effort put into it.

If you know of anything else sweet you want to send me out to dont hesitate to drop a line to