Kevin Smith Shares Stan Lee Throwback From 2003

Kevin Smith had a long relationship with Marvel Comics legend, Stan Lee, and often reminisces about him on social media. Lee made an iconic cameo in Mallrats and Smith recently shared a fun throwback photo with him and Ben Affleck at the Daredevil premiere. Turns out, that was not the only image he had of Lee from 2003. The director took to Instagram today to share another photo from the 2003 DVD Exclusive Awards.

"Find someone who looks at you the way I looked at @therealstanlee," Smith wrote. "This pic was taken at the DVD Exclusive Awards In December of 2003, where I presented Stan with a lifetime achievement award. This is 5 years before the @marvelstudios movie #ironman would give birth to the #marvelcinematicuniverse and make Stan a household name for even non-comics folks via his many cameos. Whenever someone had to introduce Stan or present him with some award, I was always so honored to be asked and eager to do it. We rarely get to interact with our heroes, but rarer still is when the heroes turn out to be as warm, welcoming, and authentic as Stan was. Miss you, Man." You can view the post below:

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Find someone who looks at you the way I looked at @therealstanlee. This pic was taken at the DVD Exclusive Awards In December of 2003, where I presented Stan with a lifetime achievement award. This is 5 years before the @marvelstudios movie #ironman would give birth to the #marvelcinematicuniverse and make Stan a household name for even non-comics folks via his many cameos. Whenever someone had to introduce Stan or present him with some award, I was always so honored to be asked and eager to do it. We rarely get to interact with our heroes, but rarer still is when the heroes turn out to be as warm, welcoming and authentic as Stan was. Miss you, Man... #KevinSmith #stanlee #marvel #legend

A post shared by Kevin Smith (@thatkevinsmith) on Oct 16, 2020 at 11:33am PDT

In a recent interview with ComicBook.com's Nicole Drum, Smith talked about the impact of the Mallrats shoutout in Captain Marvel.

"This is me presenting this guy who the world doesn't know, to a new generation be like this is a guy that created Spider-Man, man. And so I felt like I was doing him a solid in '95," Smith explained. "So, it was me shining spotlight on him and still the movie that like eventually nobody saw when it first came out. Years later, he goes and does Captain Marvel ... there Stan reading the script for Mallrats is by Kevin Smith. You know that to me is my Oscar. They'll never give me an Academy Award. That's totally fine. But this, that moment was like my Oscar."

He added, "Like it was almost like he was paying me back. He gave me back the relevancy that like we thought we were lending him with the Mallrats cameo. But we were never doing Stan a favor. He was always doing us a favor, like that buoyed the movie a decade later."

You can read more from our Smith interview here.