Welcome back to the Marvel Live lounge.
Justin Warner here.
And I am joined by none other than Brian
Crosby, Marvel's creative director,
director of live events.
What's up?
How's it going, man?
I'm having a blast, especially now that you're here.
It's an honor to be next to such like a big creative brain.
I'll let you know when he gets there.
Got it.
Firstly, how's your con?
How are you feeling?
It's just good to be back more than anything.
This is oddly familiar yet unusual at the same time.
But it's great to be back.
I've missed it.
One of my responsibilities at Marvel
is to oversee our presence, our booth and things like that,
help arrange the live stream and whatnot.
And it's great.
It's great to have be back with the fans
and interacting like we were never gone.
Right, well, talk to me about live events.
What goes into it?
When you're tasked with something,
what's the creative process like?
Sure, yeah, I mean, I think it's always
been a little bit of a flip for how we normally
do things at Marvel, right?
We typically are either reading comics
or watching movies or animation or video games
or whatever it is.
And in the case of a live event, you
have to narratively flip the paradigm
so that the fan or the guest or whatever
becomes the protagonist.
So you are-- all the experiences are happening to you.
You're the one fighting the bad guy or whatever.
So in the case of an event like this,
we have to think about experientially
what are people doing.
How are they consuming the space?
What do they hear?
What do they touch, all of those things.
So my background as a designer was in designing
theme park experiences.
So I bring that same mentality of experiential storytelling
to what I do in live events.
I love that.
And I think the thing that lingers
is the things that you remember.
For example, this gore tattoo that we both have.
But yours looks so much cooler than mine.
I fell asleep with it on.
So it might not be as semi-permanent as we thought.
Anyway, talk to me about Spider-Man 60th
because you've done a lot of work around that.
Yeah, oh my gosh, well, we've been working
on this for quite a while.
We did a virtual event a few months ago to kick it off.
There's a robust consumer products campaign.
But in my space, we wanted to figure out how do we
celebrate Spider-Man 60th in a dimensional way,
let people experience it.
And we had been doing a museum exhibit
called Marvel Universe of Superheroes
with seminal exhibitions.
And we had so much fun doing that.
We did it just after the 80th anniversary of Marvel
that we wanted to do a deep dive into one character,
really dig in and learn all we could about one character.
And quickly, Spider-Man rises to the top as a character
that people want to learn more about
and really immerse themselves in.
And so what better time than 2022?
We're coming back to San Diego.
There happens to be a Comic-Con museum just up the road.
And it's the 60th anniversary of Spider-Man.
So let's go ahead and do it.
So we partnered up with some exhibitions again.
And we have created a immersive exhibit
that has original artwork, vintage comics, props
and costumes from the films, real narrative storytelling
in that space where you can just soak it all in
and learn about where Spider-Man, Peter Parker came
from, where he is today, and then also where he's going
in the future with the him as a character but also
the larger Spider-verse.
So it's a lot of fun.
Yeah, just like for 60 years, it's an incredible
time to be a Spider-Man fan.
It is.
So speaking of fans, how do fans get access to this?
So the Comic-Con Museum is there 365 days a year.
I think that's what Comic-Con International likes to say
is Comic-Con just doesn't have to be this four
or five days here in San Diego.
But you can go to Balboa Park in San Diego any time
and immerse yourself in pop culture.
But the Spider-Man exhibit will be there
through the end of the year.
And yeah, go check it out.
I love that.
So till the end of the year, we have time to check this out?
Yeah.
You don't have to go to Comic-Con specifically--
No.
--to get some of that Comic-Con flavor and vibe?
That's right.
Yeah, it's called Marvel's Spider-Man
Beyond Amazing, the exhibition.
And yeah, it's going to be there all year long.
So go check it out.
And you don't need a badge or anything.
Just go in.
And there's a few other great exhibits too.
But let's be honest, the Spider-Man one's
the one people should really go check out.
If I don't say so myself.
I love that.
What are you most excited about here
at San Diego Comic-Con 2022?
More-- I mean, I think we've got some really unique
things happening in the booth.
We've got a partnership that we've
done with Inkbox that we're doing semi-permanent tattoos
as you showed earlier.
We have a partner called Whatnot that
has some vintage collectibles on display
that we may or may not be doing something with.
We have VV, our digital collectibles
partner, Gunner, showcasing their blue light gamer glasses.
There's just so much happening.
And of course, always we got cosplay events, signing.
So for me, the real fun is doing all that stuff,
letting the fans be a part of it and then getting
to reengage with the fans again in person
even some of my coworkers and friends
I haven't seen in two years.
That's what I'm looking forward to the most.
I love it.
Brian Crosby, thank you so much for being here
and thanks for shedding just a little insight on what
goes on in that big brain.
Absolutely. My pleasure.
Thanks for having me.
You bet.
Well, if you all need to get a hold of us,
make sure use that hashtag #MarvelSDCC, or check
us out at Marvel.com/SDCC.
We got a lot more in store, and I'm super pumped about it.
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