The Fantabulous 50s Weekend, Part 2: Mighty Marvel Cinemania

The Iron Man Mark I armor, the very first costume in the official Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

In addition to our annual road trips, my wife Anne and I have a twice-yearly tradition of spending our respective birthdays together traveling to some new place or attraction as a short-term road trip — partly as an excuse to spend time together on those most wondrous days, partly to explore areas we’ve never experienced before. We’re the Goldens. It’s who we are and what we do.

I’ve just now lived to see 50, and after weeks of research and indecision, we planned an overnight journey to the next state over, to the capital city of Columbus, Ohio, which had cool stuff that this now-fiftysomething geek wanted to see. Columbus, then, would be the setting for our first outing together as quintagenarians…

…so we old folks had fun roaming around a kiddie museum, Columbus’ Center of Science and Industry, immersing ourselves in the all-ages roadshow exhibit “Marvel: Universe of Super-Heroes”. As you’d expect from a mainstream celebration of a massive multimedia corporation with an audience of hundreds of millions, many vitrines were devoted to keepsakes from the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Costumes and props worn and touched by the actors (and/or stunt doubles) were all around the hall, imbuing onlookers with that keen vibe of authentic Hollywood proximity. We’d previously seen MCU items on our Atlanta trip back in 2019, but I was gratified to notice very little overlap between the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library & Museum’s collection and this one.

Tony Stark’s Mark V briefcase from Iron Man 2 and Arc Reactor from Avengers: Infinity War.

The Tesseract, or “Cosmic Cube” to us longtime readers. This reminds me of one of our old alarm clocks.

Okoye! T’Challa! Shuri! Wakanda forever!

Black Widow, from her own movie/swan song.

Captain America’s shield from Avengers: Endgame, which the Atlanta collection also had. Or, more likely, each museum had one of several shields used in filming.

Thor, returning to theaters July 8th!

Cate Blanchett’s unbelievably comics-accurate Hela costume from Thor: Ragnarok.

Loki’s helmet, impossible to photograph without reflections. But sometimes those can be fun Easter-egg glimpses around the rest of the exhibit hall.

Case in point: costumes from Marvel’s Captain Marvel, while Marvel’s Ms. Marvel hero-worships her from another wall.

Tom Holland’s togs from Spider-Man: Homecoming.

Green Goblin’s mask and pumpkin bomb, now part of the Marvel Cinematic Multiverse courtesy of Spider-Man: No Way Home.

Will the same inclusive invitation be extended to Formerly Netflix’s Marvel’s Daredevil, unchanged and without rebooting? (Its season-1 fleeting mentions of “The Event” barely count toward canonical legitimacy.)