The first time Kevin Feige came to San Diego Comic-Con, he was mere days away from officially working for Marvel. It was July 2000, and with a start date in August, the young producer drove down to the convention with his friend, Geoff Johns. There he bought a bunch of trades getting ready to commit fully to a world of superhero movies.
Now, almost 25 years later, Feige’s films have grossed over $30 billion and, on the eve of his latest mega Hall H panel, he spoke with Marvel Comics EIC C.B. Cebulski about their love of pop culture, comic books, and the link between Marvel Comics and Marvel movies.
After talking about how going to the movies all through the 1980s made him fall in love with the art form, Feige moved to one of his other obsessions: collecting. “It’s an illness, a sickness,” Feige said. He talked about how much he loved Star Wars toys growing up, digging a Sarlacc Pit in his backyard to play, and later started buying Star Trek toys from Playmates. “Let’s hear it for Playmates Star Trek action figures,” he joked. “You don’t talk about that in Hall H.”
However, it was in 1995 when Kenner brought back Star Wars toys that Feige said he had a terrible realization. “That’s when I realized, ‘Oh, this will not have been just my childhood, this is going to be my entire life.’”
The same could be said for Marvel. Before Feige worked exclusively for Marvel, he was already very familiar with the universe. He worked on the 2000 X-Men film early on his career and six years later, would return to Comic-Con with the newly formed Marvel Studios. There he teased fans with upcoming movies for Iron Man, Thor, Captain America and yes, the potential for a shared universe.
“It was our secret weapon,” Feige said. “At the time Fox has the X-Men, Fantastic Four and Daredevil. Sony had Spider-Man. Universal had Hulk and many of the “Big” characters were taken. So when we became our own studio…there was a notion that we were scraping the bottom of the barrel. We knew that wasn’t the case. Also, we could do something none of those other studios could do which was do this interconnectivity. That would be our secret weapon and that would really be our goal, for the first time, emulating the Marvel Universe from the comic page on the big screen.” The rest, as they say, is history.
The panel continued to show instances where Feige and his filmmakers have directly lifted images from comic book panels – such as Captain America punching Hitler, or Thanos’ snap, which was highly entertaining. “This is fun, C.B.,” Feige said. “I think it would be cool if Disney+ had a feature where you could during the movie hit it and see the frame that inspired it.”
And while Marvel Studios now, finally, has some control over every single character in the universe, there is one where Feige thinks, if he gets to that, it’ll be too much. “The one that I still think is the most obscure and I think if we ever get to that maybe we’ve gone too far is a character named Woodgod,” he said.
Woodgod–an obscure ’70s comics character, a human/animal hybrid that tried to create a society of creatures like himself–almost certainly won’t be appearing in a brand new comic announced at the panel. It’s a result of Marvel Studios influencing the comics (when it’s usually vice versa) following the TVA and the family of Miss Minutes including Sir Seconds and Doc Clock. Read more about that here.
Finally, the panel ended with Cebulski asking Feige about his hat. Feige is known to wear a hat for his next film and since Deadpool & Wolverine is now out, what was he wearing now? “My son saw it and said ‘Is that Wal-Mart?'” Feige said. “No it’s not Wal-Mart. This is a Thunderbolts hat. And that is bullets making up the asterisk at the end of the logo.”
A tease for what’s next. Check back Saturday evening for the other Kevin Feige Comic-Con panel, Marvel Studios in Hall H.
Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.
