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What does it take to build a new universe? The answer to that question is larger than we can afford to get into here, but we're pretty sure that "a person with experience" couldn't hurt. That certainly seems to be the case for Aspen Comics, who are launching their connected comic-book universe Ekos under the guiding hand of David Maisel, the originator of a small project you may now know as... the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Of course, you may already remember this story from when Popverse reported it mid-September. Ekos, you'll recall, is based on the creations of late comic artist Michael Turner, who was famous not just for his Big Two work but also for his creator-owned offerings, comics that attracted the likes of Geoff Johns before Turner's tragic passing. Now, Maisel is using his universe-building experience to link Turner's creations in a way they never were.

But before that comic, and the universe therein, hits shelves, Maisel sat down with Popverse to discuss his involvement with the project. We got into what excites him the most about Ekos and learned some of his history at Marvel, without which the MCU would not exist as we know it today. But don't let us take up more of your time - here's what Maisel himself had to say.

David Maisel: After creating Marvel Studios and spending nine years there and selling Disney, I basically retired. I didn't do press for almost ten years. But I decided last year to start telling this story because so many people wanted to hear it.

There was Stan [Lee] who was out there who created the [Marvel] characters. Stan handed me the baton and I came up with the idea for the studio, the MCU, and founded it. After eight or nine years, I handed the baton to Kevin Feige, who's been making movies. So it's really just been the three of us.

People enjoy hearing the stories so much; I did a Tim Ferriss podcast last year, I did a New Yorker piece, and I cooperated with Joanna Robinson's MCU book, but I haven't done the press like this at all. Now that I'm so excited about Ekos, I found something that makes me feel like I did at the early days of Marvel. That was the reason to step out of my shell and talk about these things.

But I haven't got my name, or the moniker of "Founder of Marvel Studios," on anything until I found the project that warranted it. And that was a big test. Luckily, this one passed. I'm happy to talk about something that's not just the past but also relevant for today. 

Popverse: Was it hard to sell people on the idea of the MCU?

It was, it was extremely hard. I was just a kid, essentially with a nice resume from school. The only reason I got the opportunity to do this is that nobody else wanted it. Back in 2003, when I went to pitch Marvel on the idea of making their own movies and connecting all the movies together in a cinematic universe, that idea was crazy. No IP holder made $100 million, or even $50 million movies. You licensed it to the studios like they had done for Spider-Man with Sony. You had no creative control and very minimal involvement and very little finances. 

But also there wasn't any interest in Marvel. Iron Man, for example, was at Warner Brothers for many years, and they let it expire! So what I said is, 'Screw that.' I had studied really hard and was fortunate to work for Creative Artists Agency and for Bob Iger at Disney, and I learned about the town. I also loved Marvel and had a creative idea for the cinematic universe. So I said, "Screw that, we'll make our own movies. I know how to make films!" Well, I thought I did. 

It was really me and Kevin Feige. Like I said, neither of us had made a movie before, but we thought we knew what we could do. I convinced them, my board at Marvel, that we'll raise $500 million, we'll have our own money. We just have to have the characters. So we got Iron Man back from Warner Brothers, I got Hulk back from Universal, Black Widow back from Lionsgate, etc. I promoted Kevin to be my president of production, my right hand person, and I was chairman of the studio. I was also co-CEO of the parent company, and eventually, by the time I left, I was the second largest owner. So it really was old school.

Kevin and I just had a blast making Iron Man and Incredible Hulk the first year, and then planning out Iron Man 2 and the rest of the movies. Once we had all the capital in place - the money and the approval from my board to go do it - then we had to convince actors to come do this. Luckily, I had worked at Creative Artists Agency and at Endeavor, so I knew a lot of the people. Like, I knew Chris Evans and I knew Robert Downey and his wife. But also Jon Favreau, when we hired him, has got a great network. And so John and Kevin and I approached Robert. Once we got Robert on board, we got Gwyneth Paltrow, and Terrence Howard at the time.

Things started building, but they all took a risk. No one made much money on the first movie. We were independent shop, you know? To Robert's credit, and everybody's, they took a gamble that if it did well, the movies would do fine in the future.

But they loved the property too, and we had such a fun sort of 'film school' type of culture. I like to keep, even now, my studio like a little cocoon. So yeah, the biggest challenge we had was convincing the people who ran Marvel at the time, which was only a $200 million company, that they should let me go make $100 million+ movies. You know, I remember them asking, 'Is your last name Spielberg?' And I'm like, 'No,' have you ever made a movie before? 'No.' 

No one believed me back then. Like for five years, our stock price went down and my board even told me, if you lose money on the movie, we'll make money selling toys. You know, no one believed in it till Iron Man's opening weekend.

Well, they won that bet. Really quickly, can you describe previous relationship with Bob Iger, like you mentioned?

Yeah, I worked at Disney back in '95 to '97, and I was at Creative Artist Agency working with a guy named Michael Ovitz, who was the founder of that agency and the most powerful man in Hollywood at the time. He left and became the president of Disney, and he brought me with him. Then at Disney, I met Bob, who was running ABC, and was able to help him out on some of his bigger projects.

In fact, I remember trying to propose that Disney buy Marvel back then, and I got kicked out of the room. It would have been like $100 million to buy Marvel, that was in 1997. Marvel is just about to go into bankruptcy, and thank God that Michael Eisner said no. Because if he had said yes, I wouldn't have been able to do all this. We'd have a very different world; it wouldn't be the MCU that you see now, I'm sure.

So it was easy for me to sell the company to Bob, because I knew him and trusted him, and I knew he would do what he did with Pixar, which was keep our culture at Marvel separate, even though we were owned by a big company like Disney. He would only help out with Disney's power to market the movies better, and use the theme parks and everything else.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but Sony was very close to buying Thor at around that time yoou were talking about. How close was that to happening?

When I joined, there was discussions with Sony for Thor and Warner Brothers for Captain America. So I told my board, 'Stop those discussions, give me six months and let me see if I can raise the money to do this.' That was the first step, and if they had licensed those characters, I would have had nothing left. Because Hulk was someplace else; Iron Man was someplace else. If I had gotten if I got to Marvel 3 to 6 months later, or if I didn't go there at all, there's no MCU ever because all the characters would be Balkanized in silos. There might have been a one off Thor movie, or one off Iron Man movie, but it wouldn't have been Robert Downey, for sure. They were talking to like Tom Cruise. It wouldn't have been Chris Hemsworth either and it wouldn't be connected. The whole entertainment landscape would be very different. That butterfly effect, it's a bit overwhelming.

But I was optimistic and, you know, it came out of passion. I love Marvel and I felt like people wanted to see their favorite characters, and if the first movie worked, every movie could be a sequel or quasi-sequel, which is more predictable and also very enjoyable. I knew the depth, like, I knew how interesting Tony Stark is. I think Warner Brothers only saw the suit of armor and they were like, 'Where is the movie in that?' But if you understand Tony Stark, then you understand there's a great movie. And with Ekos, I feel the same.

Tell me more about that.

I've collected Michael Turner art. I was huge Marvel fan and had a huge Marvel collection even before I went there. But I started collecting Michael Turner original art back in 2008, the year Iron Man came out, at Comic-Con. And I got to know his two best friends. Michael passed that year and he left his comic book company and his art to his two best friends who run Aspen now. James Cameron had the rights for all the entertainment stuff then, so I was just a collector.

But in 2018, the rights expired. James Cameron got busy on Avatar, and they asked me if I wanted to step in his shoes. And I was like, 'Of course.' I mean, it would be so great to bring the beauty of Michael Turner's line work and Peter Steigerwald's colors as the visual DNA of a new cinematic universe. Then I needed to come up with the idea for the universe, because Michael had Fathom - which is the number one comic in the world in 1998, crazy for an independent comic to beat Marvel and DC - but that was set to the present day, Soulfire was 200 years in the future, and Ekos was on another planet. Michael passed away before he could bring the characters together.

So over COVID, I finally came up with the idea that I thought was creatively unique and relevant for today's age, which is what's going to be in Ekos Volume One, which is of all of these characters together on this planet, in the same time zone.

But it comes from the same belief. Like, I really I feel strongly about this as a great comic and also as a something fresh and new that's different from my days at Marvel, but also something relevant for everyone that's alive today. It's different than 2008 now.

What's changed the most?

There wasn't as much drain on our time as there is now. There wasn't as much social media, as much short-form content. The bar to launch a worldwide mythology was high then, but it's much higher now. Plus, everyone since Marvel has tried to create their own universes, so there's all those things to compete against. With Iron Man, I had to compete against Batman and Superman and Transformers and stuff. But now it's that stuff times twenty. So I think for an idea to really pop, to be something which, in my aspiration, is a worldwide mythology like the MCU, the bar is high. It's got to be something that people hear about and are like, 'Wow, that's cool. I get it.' It's got to be probably very visual and primal so that you can recognize it. Everything has to click.

What I'm excited about with Ekos is when people are now hearing about this, like they did at Comic-Con. Because we brought it there, surrounded the the comic convention with the access portals with Grell's picture on it. I've never used my name before, so they see that it's a brand new universe which gets people excited, but then, 'produced by the founder of Marvel Studios,' and most people don't even know that there was one founder. If they do, they think it was Stan or Kevin. So it's like, 'Who's this guy? What's up with him?' But it's not completely new; it's inspired by a great legacy: creations of Michael Turner and Geoff Johns, who joined on the Ekos comic with Michael twenty years ago. 

So it's got this great legacy, which Marvel did too, but it's fresh and new. And with Marvel, we had that combination. Most people learned about it through the movies, but they love the idea that there's this decades of legacy. Here it's sort of the triple play, too. If someone's not curious about this book, I'm not sure what they'll get curious about. It's so many things combined together. 

We've got all these superstar cover artists, as you've seen on the press release, that have come together to support it because they know me, or they know Michael or Aspen or all of us. Joe Quesada, who ran comics and publishing at Marvel, J. Scott Campbell, Alex Ross, David Mack, Jerome Opeña. We have like 13 superstars that wanted to support this and a great team on the comics, headed by Peter Steigerwald doing the colors.

How will you measure the success of Ekos?

Right now, Ekos is fresh and new. Some people that know Michael Turner's stuff know his visual style and he only passed less than 20 years ago, but now there's a new young generation that might not know him as much. His visual style is so unique and so beautiful, not just for comic book fans, but for the broad audience. And that was a key thing for me. You see Michael's art; it could be on it on the side of a building on Sunset, right? I had to make Iron Man attractive as a movie for my mom and my girlfriend, because we only had 3000 people reading the comic. So I made it great for comic book fans like me, but also, it's basically a love story between Robert and Gweneth Paltrow with 10 minutes of action, right? So it broadened its appeal. With Ekos, I think I envision success the same way.

This is unique in terms of the visual DNA. We never had a visual DNA at Marvel that was similar in every movie, because this will be an animated cinematic universe - animated in a cool way, not the CGI of Dreamworks or Pixar, but something like Spider-Verse. We can use the visual DNA of Michael's lines and of the color scheme that Peter came up with, so you'll see whether it's in theme parks or games, you'll recognize it's Ekos. Plus there's this great story that I really feel proud about, and especially this new superstar Grell.

We have not talked publicly yet about the powers of Grell. He's obviously really strong, and you'll notice on the art he's got some wings like a flying squirrel, so he can glide. But those aren't his real powers. It's going to be a surprise to people, and they're so different, but it's really cool.

In five years, I hope the whole world knows Ekos when you show it to them, however we get there. I hope there's going to be a cinematic universe - Avatar meets Spider-verse type of thing - but also, we're starting with a graphic novel. I could have gone straight to movie, but I love comics. I love starting out in a graphic novel and I'm a private company - I don't have to meet a deadline. So I'm really excited that, even though they won't see the book until we deliver it and at the end of the year, there's so much art we're sharing and making the tiers. And everything is so engaging, ranging from like $45 to $25,000, and very collectible.

So yeah, in five years, if people know Ekos the brand, if they smile when someone shows it to them and if everyone knows the character Grell and Aspen and Grace and some of the others, that would make me very happy.

Ekos Volume One is on Kickstarter until Thursday, October 24.

Turns out, it was New York Comic Con all along – as the place to meet Wanda and Vision themselves, Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany! Limited Thursday NYCC 2024 tickets are still on sale, and then make sure to scoop your Photo Op with them for bragging rights on the ‘gram.