LOS ANGELES:
Bearing a green sweater and beige pants against a bright blue screen, the creator of superheroes of the comic strip Marvel Stan Lee will return to the Comic Con in holographic form to meet fans of his characters, in particular Spider-Man, Hulk, Iron Man and Thor.
Fans can interact with a Lee hologram, who died in 2018 at the age of 95, in a closed stand in Los Angeles Convention Center.
“It was obviously sad for many of us when Stan died,” said Chris Demoulin, Managing Director of Comikaze Entertainment, who operates Los Angeles Comic Con. “For a few years, we have been talking about things that we could do to help extend Stan’s inheritance.”
About six months ago, Demoulin said he had the idea of creating an avatar from Lee to serve as a “entry point for fans, old and new, in the Marvel universe”.
The project was a collaboration of Proto Hologram, a company whose holographic technology was used in shopping centers to promote films such as Conjure And A Minecraft film, And hyperreal, an artificial intelligence company that creates realistic digital humans.
The hologram was formed on Stan Lee’s myriads of the red carpets and the fans’ conventions. Fans who have never met Lee in person could recognize him from his camée appearances in each film Marvel live produced during his lifetime.
“This avatar will never say something Stan has not said,” said Demoulin. “This will never have a point of view on Marvel or the stories or the role of Stan in them which did not come directly from something that Stan said.”
George Johnson by Mammoth Vision said they used technological railings to prevent Lee from saying something out of character. “We take the words of Stan Lee and imports them into the model, then we put rails next to it,” said Johnson, “so he does not start and does not talk about things that Stan would not have said.”
Friday, in an event, Holographic Lee spoke of his love of fans conventions. “My favorite thing to be in a comic strip agreement is to meet all the incredible fans and to hear their stories about how Marvel has had an impact on their lives,” said Lee in the voice of the late actor.
Not everyone has welcomed Lee’s posthumous appearance during the Convention. Some commentators on Reddit have criticized Stan Lee’s experience. “Even in death, they will not let the guy rest,” wrote a commentator, displaying under the name of RGCBLADE. “It’s enough dystopian.”
