Stan Lee on What His Cameos Mean for the Marvel Universe

Marvel Comics co-creator Stan Lee has stayed relevant throughout this modern era of comic book movies ruling the box office, thanks to his tradition of popping in fun Marvel movie cameos. In fact, Lee's cameos are so iconic at this point that they've inspired an entire series of supercut videos and photo montages that collect every one of Lee's cameos.

While appearing at New Orleans Wizard World Comic Con this past weekend, Stan Lee talked about his Marvel movie cameos, and what they mean for the MCU:

"I don't know if any of them mean anything. [Laughter] I know they're like a step apart from the universe. My favorite one was the one where I'm standing with Thor and he's having a drink and I ask him for a drink. He won't give it to me, he says it's too strong for me; well you can tell how rugged I am, I tell him, "I can drink it!" So he gives it me and in the next scene they're carrying me out. Now the reason that's my favorite cameo is, if you think about it, it's the only one that had two scenes. I'll graduate from that to three scenes, four scenes; maybe one day I'll really be in the movie!"

The cameo Lee is referencing takes place in Avengers: Infinity War during the party sequence in Star Tower. Lee is one of the WWII veterans that's friends with Captain America, and the trio are discussing liquor when Thor pulls out an Asgardian flask containing a liquor that was "aged a thousand years in barrels built from the wreck of Grunhill's fleet." Lee steps up to that challenge, and in the next scene is being dragged out of the party.

Lee has never been shy about chewing scenery or trying to grab the limelight, so his statement about getting more and more screentime is a sly bit of truth wrapped in a joke. Besides having two scenes, playing a war vet is about as close as Lee has come to duplicated his cameo roles: he also played a war vet during the actual WWII era of Captain America: The First Avenger.

Avengers: Infinity War opens in theaters on May 4, 2018. Other upcoming Marvel Cinematic Universe movies include Black Panther on February 16, 2018, Ant-Man and the Wasp on July 6, 2018, Captain Marvel on March 8, 2019, the fourth Avengers movie on May 3, 2019, the sequel to Spider-Man: Homecoming on July 5, 2019, and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 in 2020.