Ant-Man actor and Suicide Squad star David Dastmalchian has revealed his own personal Stan Lee story, and it’s genuinely heartwarming.
Speaking to Inverse about his career that has spanned over half a dozen comic book adaptations, Dastmalchian recounted meeting Lee on the set of Ant-Man. “We sat in a trailer, me and [director] Peyton [Reed] and Stan and Paul Rudd. Stan showed us a bunch of amazing early drawings,” he said. “I told him about my first comic. I just had a son, and he asked me what my kid’s name was. I said, ‘It’s Arlo.’ He took my Avengers and wrote, ‘To Arlo, your friend Stan.’ I’ve got it framed in my house.”
Lee, who co-created many of Marvel’s most famous characters including the original Ant-Man, Hank Pym, made cameo appearances in nearly every Marvel film leading up to his death in 2018. Lee also cameoed in a plethora of animated Marvel properties, as well as various other films and television series from The Simpsons to The Big Bang Theory. Lee’s cameos in the Marvel Cinematic Universe were most often bit-parts, though they were still widely lauded by fans.
The comic Lee signed for Dastmalchian’s son was a copy of 1984’s Avengers #249 by Roger Stern and Allen Milgrom, which saw the titular superheroes team-up with Asgard’s greatest champions and the Fantastic Four to take on the threat of a then recently resurrected Maelstrom. Dastmalchian noted the comic as his very first and a well-loved prized possession, saying that, “If you look at the comic, you can see tracing lines. I would put typewriter paper over it and trace them to do my own drawings.”
Dastmalchian’s acting career was jumpstarted by his role in 2008’s The Dark Knight, in which he played a henchmen and fall-guy for Heath Ledger’s Joker. While Dastmalchian has gone on to play various other DC characters such as Abra Kadabra on The Flash and Polka-Dot Man in 2021’s The Suicide Squad, he has become a MCU fan-favorite since his first portrayal of Kurt in 2015’s Ant-Man. The character, one of Scott Lang’s close friends, returned in both 2018’s Ant-Man and the Wasp and 2021’s What If…?. At this time, though, it has not been confirmed whether or not he will reprise the role once again in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.
Fans can return to the action for themselves when Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania arrives in theaters on July 28, 2023.
Source: Inverse
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