LOS ANGELES:
Using a green sweater and tanned pants against a shiny blue screen, the creator of Marvel comics superheroes, Stan Lee, will return to the comic with holographic form to meet fans of their characters, including Spider-Man, Hulk, Iron Man and Thor.
Fans can interact with a Hologram of Lee, who died in 2018 at the age of 95, in a closed cabin at the Los Angeles Convention Center.
“Obviously it was sad for many of us when Stan happened,” said Chris Demoulin, executive director of Comikaze Entertainment, who operates Los Angeles Comic with. “In recent years, we have been talking about things we could do to help extend Stan’s legacy.”
About six months ago, Demoulin said the idea of creating a Lee avatar occurred to serve as an “entry point for fans, old and new, in the Marvel universe.”
The project was a collaboration by Proto Hologram, a company whose holographic technology has been used in shopping centers to promote films such as The conjuration and A Minecraft movie, and Hyperreal, an artificial intelligence firm that creates realistic -looking digital humans.
The hologram was trained in the innumerable appearances of Stan Lee in red carpets and in the fans conventions. Fans who never met Lee in person could recognize him from his appearances in each live Marvel movie made during his life.
“This avatar will never say something Stan didn’t say,” said Demoulin. “You will never have a point of view about Marvel or Stan’s stories or role in them that has not come directly from something Stan has said.”
George Johnson from Mammoth Vision said they wore technological railings to prevent him from reading something out of place. “We take the words of Stan Lee and imported the model and then placed rails next to it,” said Johnson, “so that he does not come out and talk about things that Stan would not have said.”
In a demonstration on Friday, Holographic Lee spoke about his love for fans conventions. “What I like most about being in a comic convention is to meet all incredible fans and listen to their stories about how Marvel has hit their lives,” Lee said in the voice of the late actor.
Not everyone welcomed Lee’s posthumous appearance at the Convention. Some commentators about Reddit criticized the Stan Lee experience. “Even in death, they won’t let the boy rest,” wrote a commentator, publishing under the name of RGCBLAde. “Everything is quite dystopian.”
