10 Characters You (Probably) Didn’t Know Existed in the Marvel Universe

by Madison Carter

The Marvel Universe is a big place. Officially, there’s over 5,000 characters running around in spandex beating the shit out of each other; truthfully, there’s at least five times that many, thanks to 70 years of non-stop publishing. Everyone from Captain America to a piece of sentient cheese that thought it was Spider-Man’s friend/pet, the Marvel Universe has had pretty much every kind of character walking (or flying) around at some point, and we’re just talking the “real” MU, not any of the five gajillion alternate realities that they’ve created on the side. But in those 70 or so years, Marvel has managed to insert a few characters into their fictional universe that just make you go “Wait, what the…?” Sometimes it’s a licensed character that they wanted to interact with their own toys. Sometimes they just alluded to the character being around, but it was enough to make the connection that somewhere out there, that character was around, schmoozing with Thor and the Red Skull. The Avengers have been on Letterman. Belushi and the SNL cast fought the Silver Samurai. Eminem teamed up with the Punisher. Spider-Man ran into the Decepticons. But then there’s…

#10 – ALF

Alf, or Alien Life Form, was the star of a short-lived but popular sitcom in the 1980s. The smartass cat-eating extra-terrestrial spent the series living with an American family and helped out around the house, when he wasn’t causing the cast members misery and eventually sending them to live in crack houses (long story). Alf was popular enough to get his own comic book for a while, and Marvel put it under their STAR Comics banner, a line intended for younger children, without any of the complications of the “real” Marvel Universe. Except they eventually threw in a nod to the MU in Alf Annual #1, where Alf met the MU’s High Evolutionary, at the time the villain in a series of Marvel annuals. It was a joke story mostly, with the Evolutionary making sure Alf wasn’t on Earth to fuck with his plans, but it was enough. I mean, hell, if Howard the Duck, Slapstick and Deadpool’s books are canon, why can’t this be?

#9 – Combo Man

At first, this guy just looks stupid, and frankly he is. A mish-mash of different characters, he was just another bad 90s idea gone even more horribly awry. But then you start to realize he was actually a product tie-in and it gets even more bizarre. Combos, for those not familiar with them, are a cracker/pretzel snack with some of the nastiest fillings you can think of, yet have been around for decades now. And for some reason, Marvel decided to pair up with them to create an all-new superhero that both companies could be embarassed by.

#8 – Dallas Cowboys (and Cheerleaders)

Okay, so yeah, it’s a “real” world in the MU, so naturally they’re going to have some of the same sports teams existing there that we do, right? But I don’t recall “our” Dallas Cowboys ever taking on the Circus of Crime, the the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders getting caught in the middle of a Hulk/Leader fight. Okay, MAYBE Emmit Smith could have gone toe-to-toe with the Juggernaut but the rest of the team?

#7 – Lois and Clark

A long-running joke, this pair has cameoed in tons of Marvel comics over the years, which just goes to show that Marvel’s version of Clark is either really a mild-mannered reporter after all, or a complete dickhead for not helping out during that whole Infinity Gauntlet thing.

#6 – Godzilla

Sure, it’s common knowledge among long-time comic geeks like myself that Godzilla had a short-lived Marvel comic back in the day, but in it he actually encountered the Fantastic Four, Avengers, Nick Fury and even Devil Dinosaur. Hell, up until very recently, characters from the series outside the big G himself were still appearing in the MU on a regular basis; one even became an X-Men member for about three seconds.

#5 – Tarzan

Yep, there’s even a version of Tarzan that has run around the MU at times, and I’m not talking about Ka-Zar. Back when Marvel held the rights to the King of the Jungle, they had him meet up with…well, nobody from the MU. They kept it completely self-contained and away from their regular stuff. He fought his own array of baddies and when they lost the license, that was that. Except one of those bad guys was a guy named Abdul Alhazred, who some Lovecraft fans may recgonize as the author of the infamous Necronomicon. Many moons later (always wanted to say that), Marvel brought back Alhazred in a Wolverine story, and there the connection was made. It wasn’t even a different version of the dude, either.

#4 – James Bond & Sherlock Holmes

Okay, this one is technically cheating just a tad, as neither actually appeared in a Marvel Universe-set comic. So why are they here? Because of a supporting character from the 70s classic series Master of Kung Fu named Clive Reston. Himself a top spy, his family was ocassionally referenced, and while they were never named (for legal reasons) it was more than obvious Clive’s dad was Bond and grandfather was Holmes. Of course, this sort of made sense, since Clive was an ally of Shang-Chi, himself the son of the infamous Fu Manchu.

#3 – The Doctor (Doctor Who)

Like Godzilla, the Doctor and his adventures translated into a licensed Marvel comic fairly easily, and while most of it was self-contained, the Doc did like to show up in Reality-616 (aka “The” Marvel Universe) from time to time. If you remember the Marvel UK line, you’ll remember Death’s Head; ol’ DH made one of his very first (but not FIRST) appearances in a Who comic (and showed up around the same time in a Transformers book too). Once Marvel lost the license though, they went with a Doctor analogue named Professor Gamble, but still – think of the beauty of an Ultron-controlled Daleks Earth-invasion storyline that could theoretically occur.

#2 – Uri Geller

Who? No, not the Doctor. But seriously…who?

Uri Geller was basically Criss Angel 30 years before Criss Angel. Well, if Criss Angel’s schtick was to bend spoons with his mind, but the same basic theme applies. He was the 1970s’ hot psychic and he was everywhere for a while. Even in the pages of Daredevil, where he helped defeat none other than…Mind-Wave. Yep, master psychic Uri Geller’s one Marvel appearance was helping to fight off a villain so lame his next appearance involved getting shot and killed by the Scourge of the Underworld.

#1 – The Flash

“Okay,” I hear you saying “Lois and Clark I get, but how did they sneak the Flash into their universe without getting sued out the ass?”

Well, it’s a little complicated, but here goes: In an issue of Quasar (yes, he actually had his own series at one point. Stop laughing.) there was an intergalactic race involving many of the galaxy’s super-speedsters. In the middle of it, a blond guy with a tattered red and yellow suit appeared out of nowhere and because running was all he’d been doing for a while, that’s exactly what he continued to do, taking part in the race and almost winning it. When asked about his name, he couldn’t remember, but thought it was something that sounded like “Buried Alien.”

Remember how in the original Crisis, the Flash (real name: Barry Allen, hint hint) ran himself into nothingness? Well, not quite, apparently. Sure, they couldn’t come right out and SAY it was him, but it was pretty obvious. So now the Fla—er, Buried Alien is running around out there somewhere under the name Fastforward.