(Left to right: Grell, Layton, Michelinie, Bell)

On Saturday April 12th, 2008 at the Toronto Comic Con - in anticipation of the upcoming Iron Man movie - I moderated a panel featuring Bob Layton (artist and inker since the mid-1970s, and one of the architects of the 1990s monster companies, Valiant), David Michelinie (creator of Venom, and long-time writer of Iron Man and Spider-Man) and Mike Grell (artist of Warlord and Green Arrow, and creator of Sable). The panel lasted for an hour and, after I lobbed them a few softies about Iron Man and the movie, we got right down to the hard stuff.

It got real good when I tossed out a quote from Ditko condemning Michelinie and Layton's drunken Iron Man storyline, and it all ended on a touching note when Mike Grell told his "best Dave Stevens story," as we took a moment to remember and celebrate the life of Dave who recently passed away at too young an age.

After it was over, Michelinie said to me that it was the best moderated panel he had ever been on, so download 50 MBs worth of Iron Man talk with splashes of Ditko thrown in for good measure!

(Layton and Michelinie)

(A stoic Michelinie)

(An unusually stoic Layton)

(Straight-on Mike Grell)