Stan Lee unveiled his upcoming YouTube channel, "Stan Lee’s World of Heroes," at Comic-Con on Thursday, promising fans something so good he should get a tax exemption.
“What we are giving you is such a gift, such a wonderful thing, I don’t think we should have to pay taxes,” Lee said. “Could you speak to somebody about that?”
Collaborators for the channel joined Lee on stage, including the original Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill), reality TV star Adrienne Curry and Peter David, writer for such comics as “The Incredible Hulk.”
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Hamill will be hosting an unnamed podcast for the channel, and he encouraged fans to tweet at him suggesting a title. He promised a show far better than that of David Letterman or Jay Leno's, because of the time he'll have have to go in-depth, referencing a podcast he did with Kevin Smith that ran more than three hours.
“For me, a podcast is a way to stay directly in touch with you guys without answering mail piece by piece,” he said.
His roots at the San Diego conference date back almost 40 years, something he was quick to remind those in attendance.
“You guys know I was a fan before I went to ‘a galaxy far, far away,’” he said to raucous applause. “I was coming to the Con in the early '70s when most of you, I guess, weren’t born … the days when there’d be one basement with six dealers and a six-screen projector to show Flash Gordon serials.”
Besides the podcast, Lee’s channel will mix fan-dedicated content with narrative programming.
Examples of the former include “Fan Wars,” in which fans join in comic book debates like Batman vs. Superman, as well as a show in which Curry scours the country for the biggest superfans she can find.
On the narrative side, David has scripted a show about a superhero who becomes a joke in the community and spends most of his time hanging out in a bar for superheroes and supervillains. He described it as something along the lines of “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia”… only better.
To that, the fans said “oooh.”
Though everyone took turns raving about their upcoming shows, David made one thing clear.
“As a Marvel reader since the 1960s, it is in fact Stan Lee’s World of Heroes, and we’re all just living in it.”
Check out a video from Stan Lee's World of Heroes below.