Since my post on Elf With A Gun got super-popular, here’s some more bizarre Marvel trivia for the folks who only know Marvel through the cinematic universe; or perhaps just don’t know much about comics:
- Howard The Duck’s most prominent supervillain is known as Doctor Bong, with a speciality in making humanoid animals. He gets his name from the giant bell he wears on his head, which he can hit to give off strange and deadly vibrations.
- Captain American was once a werewolf for a short time in the 90s
- For a while, The Punisher worked for heaven as a literal angel of vengeance. And during another; more recent era; he was also a Frankenstein’s monster.
- There is a superhero in the Marvel universe who is the son of Fu Manchu. His name is Shang Chi.
- There was actually a Hostess Fruit Pies-ad-exclusive villain known as Chairman who had a gun that turned people into chairs. This is notable because, given how Marvel very recently introduced a different villain from those ads to mainline continuity, Marvel also probably owns the rights to him as well.
- There was a supervillain called Turner D. Century, whose gimmick was that he was obsessed with the 1890s/1900s, and he had a flying tandem bicycle and an umbrella that shot fire and tried to kill everyone under the age of 65,
- At one time, Godzilla was around in the Marvel universe, and his existence is still canon. The robot built to fight him, Red Ronin, still makes appearances now and then
- An atheist horse-alien named Beta Ray Bill once yoinked Mjolnir from Thor and was worthy enough to wield it, and was so good at it that the gods of Asgard actually made him his own hammer.
- God in the Marvel universe looks pretty much exactly Jack Kirby
- There was a superhero called NFL Superpro who got his powers from the fumes of a burning mountain of football memorabilia and experimental chemicals. His writer created him to get free NFL tickets.
- There is a superhero known as 3D Man whose gimmick is that he has the strength; durability and speed of THREE whole men!
- Captain America once fought a conspiracy whose head was strongly implied to be Richard Nixon, who shot himself after Cap found him out.
- Squirrel Girl, a woman with the power to control squirrels, is one of the most powerful characters in the Marvel universe, who has beaten Doctor Doom, Galactus and even Thanos in combat.
- Squirrel Girl is also on a team called The Great Lakes Avengers, whose members powers include the ability to teleport over to the next room, the power to grow grotesquely fat (But also super-strong) and the ability of immortality (But no other superpowers at all)
- There was once a whole storyline in the Thor comics where Thor was transformed into a frog. It is considered one of the character’s most iconic stories and one of his best.
- There is a female version of MODOK called MODAM
- There was once a team of supervillains called The Headmen, with the theme of having fucked-up heads, most notably Ruby Thursday; who replaced her own head with a spherical; morphing red supercomputer. They were created by the same guy as Howard The Duck.
- Thanos once rode his own helicopter. Not a super-awesome cosmic space helicopter mind you, just an ordinary yellow helicopter with his name on it.
- Ghost Rider once teamed up with a character known only as “The Friend,” who was strongly implied to be Jesus Christ.
- There is a company who specializes in cleaning up superhero battles known as Damage Control, created by the late; great Dwayne McDuffie.
- There are canonical characters known as The Bushmaster and The Whizzer.
- The Marvel Comics version of the Mandarin (Who is wildly different from the film version) got his supertechnology from a race of alien space-dragons, the most prominent representative of which is named Fin Fang Foom and wears tiny purple shorts.
- For a while Marvel published an actual comic called Giant Sized Man-Thing. It was also written by the guy who created Howard the Duck, and indeed was where Howard got his first ongoing series.
- The name of the man who created Howard the Duck was Steve Gerber. God bless Steve Gerber.
I wanna to this
Dracula is actually a villain in this universe
Speaking of vamps two words: DISCO VAMPIRES, there is a coven in new york who spend their time in an eternal disco party led by a vampire called Sheba Sugarfangs. They use dancing as way to control their vampiric urges but sometimes they will patrol their neighbourhood in case of a threat.
Loki aparently had fucked his way around the universe. So much he has a dozen of kids in midgard over the centuries that have no idea they are related to him. This was revealed in the same issue where he teamed up with spiderman to save his own daughter
There was an entire storyline about Loki dying than coming as a kid, only this version was trying to be good. In fact lately his story arc has been about his redemption and escape from the role of a villain. Complete with time travel antics and doctor who style regenarations. It starts on the journey to mystery, then young avengers then it finally comes to a close in loki agent of asgard
- One time, a U.S. Army corporal named Todd Ziller was transformed into a Godzilla-knockoff with the American flag “painted” on its chest and head, dubbed the American Kaiju. He exclusively yelled: “Yuuu! Esssss! Aayy!”
- Mr. Fantastic/Reed Richards has on more than one occasion hypnotized Skrulls (shapeshifting, war-like aliens who’ve tried to conquer the Earth) into believing they were cows and just leaving them like that. Years later, some people who’d eaten the meat/drank the milk of these Skrull-cows gained shape-shifting powers.
- There is a villain called Swarm, who is the consciousness of a dead Nazi scientist whose body is a made entirely of bees that he can mentally control.
- A truck driver named Ulysses Solomon Archer (USA) was injured in a crash, having part of his skull replaced with an “experimental alloy” that let him pick up radio signals straight to his brain. He then tricked out his truck with weapons and gadgets and fought crime. He later outfitted his truck to go into space.
- NFL Super Pro’s sidekick for a time was a guy named J Pennington Pennypacker, an accountant who attended a self-esteem camp that was a front for giving people superpowers. He gained the ability to shoot pennies out of his wrist and called himself The Almighty Dollar.
Comic books are weird.
- a character named shameful william has no powers, but is incredibly rich and an omniphile, being sexually aroused by everything
- one of captain america’s best friends and most trusted allies is a super-strong homeless former wrestler named d-man
- there’s a mild-mannered newspaper reporter named clark kent (or possibly kent clark), who doesn’t appear to have any powers, but is a clumsy oaf and built like a brick shithouse
- mantis, most famous for being one of the guardians of the galaxy, has also appeared in dc comics as willow, and in the independent comic series scorpio rose as lorelai
- there was a short-lived comic entitled trouble, that was about the sex life of a 17 year old aunt may
- though the events of dc vs. marvel aren’t canon, the events of jla.avengers are, though they’re very rarely mentioned
- thanos once rewrote the laws of the universe so dead characters couldn’t come back to life any more. nobody took any notice of this, obviously, and it was never mentioned ever again.
- Matt Murdock spent several months trying to convince his closest friends that he had an identical twin brother named Mike, and that the sighted Mike was Daredevil. Of course, “Mike” and Matt could never appear in the same place at the same time.
- Steve Rogers drew comics before he became Captain America, starring a dude named Roger Stevens who became “Sir Spangled” and fought the enemies of America alongside his dog, Liberty Bonds.
- In the original comics, Bucky wasn’t Steve’s friend before they became heroes—there was too big an age gap, for starters. But Steve did have a close friend in his neighborhood with whom he got into lots of scrapes: Arnie Roth, who was later revealed as one of the first gay men in mainstream comics.
- There is a frog that lives in Central Park that has the power of Thor. He is generally known as Throg, and used to be a human named Simon, but goes by “Puddlegulp” in his everyday life.
- An unnamed German Shepherd has been host to multiple symbiotes, most prominently “Lasher”; she/they briefly teamed up with Deadpool to fight Carnage.
- The aforementioned Dracula has a castle on the moon, which Dr Doom visited him at.
- Captain America once fought a lesbian mad scientist who wanted to sterilise all the worlds women and control the world from her Lesbian Supervillain Party Island. She tried to transform him into a woman using mad science and he defeated her by dressing up in his girlfriends costume and Nearly Destroying The World As We Know It
- Ultron built himself a Homicidal Robot Wife using the brain patterns of Hawkeye’s then girlfriend Mockingbird and she went on to become his arch nemesis because they couldn’t agree on the right way to wipe out humanity.
- Deadpool and Thanos are involved in a love triangle with Death. Thanos cursed Deadpool to be completely unkillable to try and stop him getting to hook up with her
- Spiderman once fought Megatron, leader of the Decepticons to help the Autobots rescue their human friend Buster’s father from them
- Madame Masque’s supervillain dad Count Nefaria once tried to Hypnotise The Entire World into being polite to him and was willing to murder millions of people just to achieve this
ogre and I keep talking about starting a podcast, wherein he will start explaining comics to me, and eventually it ends with me stalking off and slamming the door.
This is why.