Marvel Studios founder on comics, Stan Lee and NFTs

Everyone knows Marvel Studios. The production juggernaut fundamentally changed the entertainment landscape when it launched the Marvel Cinematic Universe in earnest with the release of Iron man in 2008. Fifteen years and over $25 billion in revenue later, the company continues to put out movies and streaming shows that expand the characters under the banner.

What people may not know is the person behind it all: David Maisel, the man who spearheaded the cinematic universe and was named chairman of Marvel Studios in March 2007. Maisel is responsible for getting the company to produce movies of the characters it owns instead of licensing them to other studios. He also executive produced Iron man, Iron Man 2, Thorand Captain America: The First Avengerfilms that established the foundation of the MCU.

A longtime comic book collector and fan of the world of superheroes, Maisel left Marvel in 2010 to pursue other projects, eventually founding Mythos Studios in 2018. The IP entertainment studio acquired iconic comic book artist Michael Turner’s Aspen Comics that same year.

Mythos Studios is now releasing Eko’s Genesis Art Collection, a 995 1/1 NFT auction of the late Turner’s work, honoring both the comic artist and longtime collaborator, colorist Peter Steigerwald. We sat down with Maisel ahead of the auction to talk about his love of comic art, bringing Turner’s work to Web3, and the upcoming 15th anniversary of Iron man.

Taking comic art to the Web3

Turner is known for his iconic comic art, having created covers for Marvel’s Civil War series in 2006. He is also known for his popular comic book heroines, with the 1998 Fathom and the 2003s Soulfire being the most remarkable. FathomThe main character is a woman named Aspen Matthews, a marine biologist who discovers that she is a member of an advanced underwater species. Published by Top Cow Productions, it beat out both DC Comics and Marvel Comics to become the number one comic in North America when it debuted – a huge achievement for an independent production.

The upcoming Ekos Genesis Art Collection takes its name from Turner’s unfinished Ekos comic book IP, of which the artist was only able to complete a single, six-page story before dying in 2008 of complications from treatment for bone cancer.

“I was just thinking [Ekos] was a great name and an honor for Michael,” said Maisel while speaking to nft now. “In many ways, it’s taking the baton from Michael in the same way that I felt like I was taking the baton from Stan Lee, who told me that when he told me how proud he was of Iron man. And then I passed the baton to Kevin [Feige].”

The Ekos drop isn’t Mythos Studios’ first foray into Web3 with Turner’s work. In May 2021, Maisel and the company filed for bankruptcy Fathom Vol. 1 Cover C for auction at the Foundation. It sold for over $100,000. After the success of that release and spending a year studying the space and consulting with famous Web3 characters—including Snowfro, Tyler Hobbs, Bryan Brinkman, and Cozomo de Medici—Maisel developed the idea of ​​building out a proper drop to give collectors a opportunity to own an individual piece of Turner and Steigerwald’s work.

“They welcomed me and guided me,” Maisel said of his interactions with Web3 natives while surveying the site. “I am truly speechless and humbled by the support.”

Eko’s Genesis art collection

The images in the Ekos drop consist mostly of work from Turner’s Fathom and Soulfire comics, with a handful of pieces from the unfinished Ecois also present. But Turner’s original line art makes up only a small part of the nearly 1,000-strong Ekos Genesis collection. Understanding how the collection as a whole was created requires an understanding of the process of how comic art is made.

The finished images that are published in a comic usually do not come from a single artist. Before any coloring is added to an image, it must first have its underlying shapes and forms established. This is known as line art, the monochromatic illustrations that colorists then work with to fully realize a piece.

Few comic artists are as well-known or revered as Turner, and few are as skilled at bringing out the magic of Turner’s work as Steigerwald. The pair’s work has become so famous over the years that Maisel describes them as the cartoon equivalent of “John and Paul from the Beatles”.

For each of Turner’s original line drawings in the collection, there are eight 1/1 variants. These include the published comic work, Color Accent, Diamond Foil, Back in Black, Gold & Bold, Electric Neon and Blacklight Pop art styles. The Blacklight Pop pieces are especially dear to Maisel, as they pay homage to the classic 1970s Marvel blacklight posters that inspired his early journey as a comic book lover and collector.

Mythos Studios has yet to reveal the eighth and final version of the art, called Portraits, which they’re saving for the first 100 wallets that make a deposit at the auction. This auction will take place on May 2, 2023, the 15th anniversary of the release of Iron man.

The collection will be sold in a Dutch auction with a starting price of 10 ETH and will decrease by 0.5 ETH every four minutes until it reaches 0.5 ETH. After that, the price will drop to 0.2 ETH, assuming supplies remain. Interested collectors can secure an artwork before the May 2nd auction by depositing 10 ETH or more by April 30th (at the time of writing, 55 of the 995 works have been awarded).

The top six collectors by number of NFTs will also receive a Top Collector Reward, one of six NFTs from the family of works auctioned in Mythos Studios’ May 2021 release. To further gamify the auction, these top collectors will choose which NFTs from that family they want to own in descending order, with number one choosing first, and so on. Mythos Studios will also donate an undisclosed portion of sales from the auction to the Hero Initiative, a charity that creates financial safety nets for cartoonists in need.

Building a new collector relationship with NFTs

Maisel is a big believer in NFT’s ability to create new and more intimate types of relationships between artists, studios and collectors. During his time as chairman of Marvel Studios, Maisel would often go incognito to his local bookstore and read comics there, chatting with people in the community and asking them what storylines they liked best and who their favorite characters were.

“They didn’t know I was the chairman of Marvel,” Maisel said with a laugh. “Web3 means I don’t have to sit on the floor at Barnes and Noble anymore; I can have that direct connection to the fans and collectors. And I’m looking forward to that.”

Web3 will likely be a comfortable home for Mythos Studios. The collection has received a ton of love from Web3 heavy hitters like Pranksy, Seed phrase, Super massiveand more pending the auction.

The artwork for the Genesis Art Portraits NFTs in the collection will be revealed on June 27, the anniversary of Turner’s passing and an important date for the team that assembled the Ekos collection. Posthumous NFT releases can be difficult to land, often courting controversy from the iconic figure’s fanbase for being a cash grab and disrespectful to their legacy in general. Maisel acknowledges the concerns fans may have, but believes Turner would have supported the collection.

“Peter and Frank [Mastromauro], who knew him so well, think he would be our biggest cheerleader on this,” Maisel said of what Turner would have thought about seeing his work live on in a digital format that didn’t exist in his lifetime. “He was very into technology and did things with an entrepreneurial spirit. They think he would be happy that a new generation of people might like this art.”