The exclusive comic was part of the official launch of the Iron Man: Experience attractions at Hong Kong Disneyland, which was the first Marvel-themed attraction at any Disney park. The number of sold copies at Hong Kong Disneyland is estimated to be over 20, 000. This tied with their Superhero Summer Event featuring the Dimensions of Danger and Iron Man: Experience attraction.
This is the first Marvel Comics and Disney collaboration to make a comic book together, where I was tasked to develop a story that needed to balance Disney and Marvel Comics elements. Iron Man: Experience was all intents and purposes, it's own entity that took most of its world building foundation from the films. Many of which cannot be used in a Marvel Comic book due to legalities and other issues that I cannot discuss here.
I took a deep dive into the Iron Man: Experience attraction meeting with Hong Kong Disneyland's Creative Director of Entertainment & Costuming, Art Director, Imagineers, and the marketing department to see what they developed, taken from the films and comics, to see what parts I could use in a story. Working with two Marvel Comic's editors, we looked at what restrictions and other hurdles I would need to face that were mentioned earlier with the things I would like to use in the story I was planning. The solution for most of the hurdles came to me while doing research for this project.
I proposed to have Disney exist in the Marvel Comic's main universe, Earth-616, but treat Iron Man: Experience's Stark Expo Asia as an actual expo being held there. Essentially, like a crossover in comics and in the films. There was a small lull in production to see if the legalities of this were possible. It was and this opened the doors for me to bring in many of the Disney elements into the story, such as Wendy Wong, a character created at Disney that introduced the Iron Man: Experience world and was part of the immersion experience, Stark Glasses (3D glasses) and made the non-named villain in the attraction into Arnin Zola. I wanted to connect with the local market and not just have Iron Man fly into Hong Kong just for the story. I created a new local Hong Konger Marvel superhero, Arwyn Wong. With all this set in place, I was able to bring in other Marvel Comic characters into the story, allowing me to also tie into Hong Kong Disneyland's Superhero Summer Event. There was a lot of buzz in the local media (links further below) wondering who the new Marvel superhero will be like, which lead up to the grand opening of the Iron Man: Experience attraction and Superhero Summer Event.
Media:
Hong Kong Disneyland Superhero Summer Event and Iron Man Experience Launch Media Day
The artist and I were a part of the media only day to meet the Hong Kong Marvel Fan Club and do interviews with local and international media.
Iron Man: Hong Kong Heroes
Marvel Comics published Iron Man: Experience under the new title - Iron Man: Hong Kong Heroes with two additional variant covers to the world market.
It sold out with an estimated 20, 941 issues sold and ranked 102nd in sales for that month (Source: ICv2). It was also "Certified Cool" in Previews World.
Iron Man: Hong Kong Heroes Preview Pages
Media:
Attractions Magazine article about this release of Iron Man: Hong Kong Heroes #1.
Marvel.com interview.
Milk Magazine HK Issue 834, July 13, 2017
Comic Book News Sites
Superhero Summer @ Harbour City
Hong Kong Disneyland used comic book pages and art from the Iron Man: Experience comic to create these temporary marketing photo op display attractions with a lifesize scale of Iron Man outside of Harbour City.
Media:
