Kevin Feige Shared His Geek and Marvel Origin Story at Comic-Con

(Jesse Grant/Getty Images for Disney)

July 2000 was the year I turned four and the year Kevin Feige first appeared at San Diego Comic-Con. At the time he was days away from officially working for Marvel, having just driven down to the city with his friend, Geoff Johns. 

Time flies. At the time, Kevin was a young producer, getting ready to commit fully to a world of superheroes. I wonder if he knew the impact he would have all these years later. 25 years have gone and passed along with a legacy of movies. 

At this time Feige’s films have grossed over $30 billion. In a panel that took place in Hall H at Comic-Con with C.B. Cebulski, he revealed his love of pop culture, comic books, and the link between Marvel Comics and movies. How they’ve sparked a light in a new generation of fans and will continue to do so in the future. 

After going to the movies throughout the 1980s, he fell in love with the art form. His obsession then branched out to collecting. “It’s an illness, a sickness,” Feige said, growing up in love with the Star Wars toys, digging a Sarlacc Pit in his backyard to play, and later buying Star Trek toys from Playmates. “Let’s hear it for Playmates Star Trek action figures.” He joked later on, “You don’t talk about that in Hall H.” 

In 1995, when Kenner brought back Star Wars toys, the realization dawned on Feige that this wasn’t just his childhood. It would be his entire life. I do believe most of us would love to bring our childhood dreams to life, exactly like Kevin Feige had with the MCU and more. Who wouldn’t want the universe at our fingertips? 

Before Feige worked exclusively for Marvel, he was already very familiar with the Universe. He had worked on the 2000 X-Men film early on in his career and would return six years later, to Comic-Con, with the newly formed Marvel Studios. He would go on to tease Iron Man, Captain America, and the potential for a shared universe. 

“It was our secret weapon,” Keige 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.” I bet you can guess what happened next. 

Throughout the rest of the panel, they showed instances where Feige and his filmmakers took direct images from comic books and placed them on the big screen. Captain America punching Hitler, or Thanos’ snaped.

“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 fream that inspired it.” Which I think would be a feature many of us would love to have. 

Now that Marvel Studios has some control over every single character in the universe. Feige does talk about what would be too much, even for him. “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.” A ‘70s comic book character, Woodgod is a human/animal hybrid that tried to create a society of creatures like himself. 

The panel ends with Cebluski asking Feige about his hat: “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.” Which we still don’t know the purpose behind. 

A tease for what’s next? We know Marvel isn’t afraid to change the titles of their movies or shows. A great example would be The Falcan & The Winter Soldier when they changed it to Captain America and the Winter Soldier.

Having been in Hall H for the Thunderbolts* announcement, I know I can’t wait to see what they have in store for us. I started this journey with Iron Man, years after it had been released, of course, but have found myself going to every opening night since and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.