Exhibition - Marvel's Spider-Man : Beyond Amazing : Special Presentation Panel for Volunteers & Donors 

By Mulder, San Diego, Comic-Con Museum, 30 june 2022

Today, a MulderVille representative was allowed access to a Comic Con Museum Panel Discussion about the newest exhibit, Beyond Amazing: Spider-Man (The Exhibition).  This was held at the museum's lower level's auditorium.

This event was first introduced by Rita Vandergaw, the Executive Director of the Comic Con Museum.  She first announced that the Comic Con Museum will be a place of rotating exhibits, then introduced the panel's moderator, Brian Crosby.  Mr. Crosby is Marvel's Director of Themed Entertainment and Development.  Mr. Crosby thanked Ms. Vandergaw for the introduction, and then proceeded to share and introduce the main panelists, Dr. Ben Saunders and Mr. Patrick A. Reed.  They are the co-curators of this Spider-Man exhibit, which was produced by the German group Semmel Exhibitions.

Both Dr. Saunders and Mr. Reed shared personal stories of how they "got here" and created this exhibit.  Reed mentioned that "we both are living the dream!  While we are scholars and academics on these subjects, but in reality we are really deep deep fans."  Dr. Saunders next said "Spider-Man is worthy of the title 'Iconic'. We must discover and share what allows him to transcend such cultural, gender, and racial differences."

Mr. Reed then talks about the numerous ways of the relatability of Spider-Man, from the teenage angst and problems, to struggling in young adulthood, which all led to the self imposed question of "so from all this, how do we curate 60 years of Spider-Man lore?  We have so many interpretations! (from artists and writers)".

They then both began to answer that question by asking "What in Spider-Man makes it matter to me?"

For Dr. Saunders, he began with, "I had a childhood hope that I might see Spider-Man!  Coming from Wales (Great Britain), I had my first visit to New York when I was 25, some time ago (mild chuckles from audience).  This love of the lore of Spider-Man motivated me to emigrate to the United States.  It has changed my life."

Mr.  Reed then began to talk about his experiences in New York. He talked a little about the start of his first day, but then "I saw something strange on the street while struggling to make a living in New York.  I saw a 'Daily Bugle News' van.  That made me wonder what was going on, then I began to see evidences of a Spider-Man movie getting filmed in this part of New York!  So, the next day I brought my Polaroid camera, and please don't judge how old I am, and I started to take photos of Spider-Man 2 or 3.  I couldn't remember which one it was."

After their bits of reminiscing, they started finishing their panel by discussing about the need for more institutions that exhibit all the wonderful stories and morals through the comic book medium.  From Mr. Reed - "This place, the Comic Con Museum, celebrates the CULTURE of Comic Con and its related forms of expressing like comic books and film and TV and video games.  This place is the first of its kind in the world."

Lastly, they opened up to answering audience questions.  First question was "What was your favorite run in Spider-Man?"  Dr. Saunders replied "It's hard to nail down, but I first must mention the Lee/Ditko run, but there are also Bendis & Bagley, Dan Slots, and Ross Andrew with his architectural style especially of New York."  Mr. Reed's response was "besides Ditko, there's McFarlane and Bagley, but I'm also a 90's kid.  There is a grace and agility of his leaps from those times."

The second and last question was asked by MulderVille's representative, which was "have you met up with other 'Professional Fans'?"  They both enthusiastically replied how all of Marvel are professional fans and even met many among Semmel Exhibitions staff.  Mr. Reed mentioned that even while trying to figure out how the music would be created for this exhibit, he just sent some source materials and music and his own thoughts to Semmel staff, and they had conversations with him to get the sounds and music right.  So when he heard the first pieces of music, he knew he was dealing with fellow professional fans.

Written by Alvin H Revilas
Photos and video : Alvin H Revilas