comics
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Stan Lee: How Spider-Man Came Into Being
In this short, heartfelt talk, comics legend Stan Lee tells the true (and hard-to-believe) story of how Spider-Man was created. He recounts being asked by his publisher to invent a new superhero, spotting a fly crawling on a wall, and landing on the idea of a wall-crawling, web-slinging teenager with real-world personal problems. His publisher rejected the idea outright, so Stan quietly slipped Spider-Man into the final issue of a dying magazine, Amazing Fantasy. When the sales figures came back, the character was a runaway hit. Lee turns the anecdote into an inspirational message: if you have an idea you genuinely believe in, don't let anyone talk you out of it, and always do your best work by doing what you want, the way you think it should be done.
Dashverse
Dashverse is an AI-native entertainment company building tools and platforms that let anyone create, publish and monetize stories - from comics to microdramas - at a fraction of the time and cost of traditional production. Its ecosystem includes Frameo.AI (generative video studio), DashReels and ShortFree (microdrama apps), and Dashtoon (AI comics).
Nina Perez
Nina Perez is the founder of Project Fandom, an entertainment news and podcast platform she launched in 2009 that covers TV, movies, gaming, comics, anime, and books from a geek's perspective. Dubbed 'The Oprah of MySpace' for her uncanny ability to get readers hooked on almost anything, she is also a published author with three series under her belt, a Social Media Community Manager by day, and a lifelong Brooklynite who now calls Portland, Oregon home.
Sanidhya Narain
Sanidhya Narain is the CEO and Co-Founder of Dashverse, the parent company behind Dashtoon, DashReels, and Frameo.AI - a portfolio of AI-native entertainment platforms reaching 20+ million users worldwide. A chemical engineer turned content entrepreneur, Narain spent nearly four years at Pocket FM building its global content engine to $120M in revenue before pivoting to his conviction that generative AI would do for storytelling what the camera phone did for photography. Dashverse raised a $13M Series A led by Peak XV Partners in August 2025 and, by early 2026, had inked a multi-year deal with Harlequin to co-produce animated microdramas using its Frameo.AI studio.