Historical text from CxPulp:
vanhornluke
03-16-2015, 10:58 AM
No doubt there's not enough interest in a handbook like this to justify actually publishing it. Nevertheless, there are a number of 616 characters based on real people who are deserving of handbook treatment, so I thought it would be interesting to try to gather them together in a single thread.

Biblical Characters (I'm not sure how many have made 616 appearances, but I'm pretty sure David and Solomon have at least been referenced, and at least Jesus' birth has been referenced, but I'm not sure about his later life)
Julius Caesar
Cleopatra
King Arthur (well, maybe there was no real King Arthur, but he's close enough to count for the purposes of this thread)
Richard the Lionheart
Joan of Arc
Paul Revere
Ethan Allen
Davey Crockett
Wyatt Earp
Annie Oakley
Doc Holliday
Billie the Kid
Wild Bill Hickok
FDR
Eleonore Roosevelt
Winston Churchill
Stalin
Nazis: Hitler, Himmler, Goering, Hess
J. Edgar Hoover
Stan Lee
Jack Kirby

I know there are more recent presidents as well, but they're more problematic because of the sliding time scale.

Anyone else that should be added?
 
Stuart V
03-16-2015, 02:17 PM
Leonardo Da Vinci
Nostradamus
Isaac Newton
Galileo
Imhotep
Nikola Tesla
Zhang Heng
Archimedes
 
vanhornluke
03-16-2015, 05:38 PM
Ooh, yeah, those guys, definitely.

Another that could use some handbook love:

Blackstone the Magician
 
Sidney Osinga
03-16-2015, 06:20 PM

vanhornluke wrote:

King Arthur (well, maybe there was no real King Arthur, but he's close enough to count for the purposes of this thread)

He's already been covered.

Another possibility would be Robin Hood, although a back-up story said he was actually Fandral. Of course, an entry for Fandral wouldn't be a bad thing.
 
Angelicknight
03-16-2015, 06:53 PM
KISS
Human Fly
Nightcat
Uri Geller
Barack Obama
Johnny Carson
Jay Leno
David Letterman
Stephen Colbert
Moses
Goliath (Biblical)
Kublai Khan
Zhu Yuanzhang
 
vanhornluke
03-16-2015, 07:10 PM
The mention of Kublai Khan reminded me: Genghis Khan also has some appearances.
 
vanhornluke
03-17-2015, 09:54 AM
Another one I forgot: Jesse James.
 
zuckyd1
03-17-2015, 01:26 PM
Michael Bloomberg
A tricky one would be Fred Hembeck.
The appendix for such a handbook could be quite interesting. Lots of "one-hit wonders".
 
vanhornluke
03-17-2015, 03:16 PM
Ooh, that appendix could be very interesting. Another one I overlooked: Napoleon.
 
Eduardo M.
03-17-2015, 03:40 PM

vanhornluke wrote:

Ooh, that appendix could be very interesting. Another one I overlooked: Napoleon.

It could be mentioned that in two alternate universes, Napoleon's corpse was exhumed for DNA samples to be used in creating a clone that would serve as the perfect leader to a certain terrorist organization
 
toddcam
03-18-2015, 09:19 AM
I know this is imaginary, but I would be pissed as hell if Biblical characters were assumed to be real people.
 
Andy E. Nystrom
03-18-2015, 06:27 PM
I would definitely leave out Biblical characters as that's a hot potato. With Jesus alone there are at least four beliefs about him that I know about: that he's completely made up, that he's exactly as portrayed in the Bible, that he was an ordinary man, that he was multiple people. Probably best to not even go there in a Handbook, though obviously historical strong believers like Joan of Arc are fair game.

More people:
Benito Mussolini
Hirohito
Hideki Tojo
Tom Fagan
Flo Steinberg
Sol Brodsky
Roy Thomas
Alice Cooper (assuming his Marvel stories are canon in the multiverse)
Not Ready for Prime Time Players (i.e. the early cast of Saturday Night Live)
 
Angelicknight
03-18-2015, 06:45 PM
Marvel published an Evel Knievel promo comic in 74 where he faced the masked villain Mr. Danger. Nothing keeping it from being 616 so i would add him as well.
 
toddcam
03-18-2015, 07:57 PM
Yeah, Andy, that's what I meant. Sorry, not trying to be anti-religious.

Andy E. Nystrom
03-18-2015, 09:23 PM

toddcam wrote:

Yeah, Andy, that's what I meant. Sorry, not trying to be anti-religious.

No harm done. Part of my reply was meant as preemptive, but I also know that people in this forum are pretty cool headed even when they disagree. As long as everyone plays nice I'm happy.
 
vanhornluke
03-19-2015, 01:49 PM
I wasn't trying to push any particular theological/historical view about biblical characters. It's just that they've been referenced in 616 comics, so I thought they would be worth covering in a handbook, even if it was only covering what had been explicitly said about them in 616 stories and leaving out anything else. Or perhaps they'd be better left to zuckyd1's appendix idea. In any case, the type of references I had in mind are like those mentioned here regarding King Solomon.

On a different note, what about Billy Ray Cyrus #1? It includes an appearance of Merlin, so I don't see any reason to think it's not 616. :-P

There were a few series during the 50s like Western Outlaws and Sheriffs which claimed to depict famous crimes, events, etc. I don't know how many of those stories were b.s., but any of them based on actual events would also help fill up an appendix.
 
toddcam
03-19-2015, 02:01 PM
My objection was to placing them in a "real people" handbook. You mentioned King Arthur with the caveat that you weren't sure he was real, so it looked like it was assumed they were real. I would have no problem seeing Biblical characters in a handbook, because whether they are real historical figures or not, there is evidence that they have an existence within the Marvel Multiverse. Pissed is probably overstating it, though, I admit. I would be annoyed at THE OFFICIAL HANDBOOK OF THE MARVEL UNIVERSE: REAL-LIFE PEOPLE 2015, featuring Moses, Jesus Christ, the angel Moroni, Siddhartha Gautama, etc. I'd feel the same for other figures of ambiguous historicity, such as the aforementioned Arthur or even Socrates.
 
vanhornluke
03-19-2015, 02:31 PM
Ah, that makes sense.

Another person I just thought of: Nikita Khrushchev (the real guy, not the alien that replaces him)
 
zuckyd1
03-19-2015, 04:02 PM
There could be several appendices: a general one, one for people of questionable historicity... and of course one for Marvel employees
 
toddcam
03-19-2015, 09:21 PM
The sliding timescale would be a big problem for the idea, but not only for political figures. Didn't Spider-Man meet Johnny Carson and Ed McMahon? With the slide, Carson would have died before Peter was even bitten by the spider.
 
zuckyd1
03-20-2015, 09:25 AM

toddcam wrote:

The sliding timescale would be a big problem for the idea, but not only for political figures. Didn't Spider-Man meet Johnny Carson and Ed McMahon? With the slide, Carson would have died before Peter was even bitten by the spider.

That assumes that 616's Johnny Carson died at the same time that our's did.
 
Stuart V
03-21-2015, 04:31 AM
Personally, right this second I'm more intrigued in real versions of 616 people. Subtly different from the above, where a real world person has a counterpart in the comics, this is where someone from 616 was named as a nod to a real life individual, so the name is the same, but they aren't meant to really be the 616 counterpart to the person in the real world - e.g. Kitty Pryde, or Comixfan founder Eric Moreels, who was turned into an unlucky guard in Weapon X.
 
toddcam
03-22-2015, 04:41 AM

zuckyd1 wrote:

That assumes that 616's Johnny Carson died at the same time that ours did.

I suppose that's true, but what a slippery slope that might be! For example, it may not be confirmed in the Marvel Universe that the U.S. presidency is four year terms. It could be that, in the span of 15 years, the United States has had nine presidents, Johnson to Obama, and sure, Johnson was alive in 2002, we don't know that President Johnson was born in 1908 and died in 1973. It's actually kind of funny, and interesting to think about.
 
Andy E. Nystrom
03-22-2015, 08:17 AM
Not really related to real people, but the sliding timeline also means that Christmas happens multiple times a year. Before you could say that Christmas as depicted in title x in 1975 is the same Christmas as title y in 1976, but things have gotten so interconnected that I doubt that's still the case. Also, while I don't mind JMS writing a Spidey story about 9-11, I wish he had done it out of continuity for the same reason: eventually you might argue that a rebuilt World Trade Center later gets demolished but that's arguably disrespectful to the original intent.