LOS ANGELES (REUTERS)

Wearing a green sweater and tan pants against a bright blue screen, Marvel comic book superhero creator Stan Lee will return to LA Comic Con in holographic form to meet fans of his characters including Spider-Man, Hulk, Iron Man, and Thor.

Fans can interact with a hologram of Lee, who died in 2018 at the age of 95, in an enclosed booth at the Los Angeles Convention Centre.

The project was a collaboration of Proto Hologram, a company whose holographic technology has been used in malls to promote films such as “The Conjuring” and “A Minecraft Movie,” and Hyperreal, an artificial intelligence firm that creates realistic-looking digital humans.

The hologram was trained on Stan Lee's myriad appearances on red carpets and at fan conventions. Fans who never met Lee in person might recognise him from his cameo appearances in every live-action Marvel movie made during his lifetime.

In a demonstration Friday, holographic Lee talked about his love of fan conventions.

"My favorite thing about being at a comic convention is getting to meet all the amazing fans and hearing their stories about how Marvel has impacted their lives," Lee said in the late actor's voice.