I’ve been trying to list of all the fictional marvel comic book points of interest. Sort of like that companies’ old handbook of characters series, but for destinations, not people. (Why? 'Cuz I’m a geek. That’s why!) Thus far, I’ve thought of the following list of past & present places:
Avengers’ Mansion
the Baxter Building / 4 Freedom Plaza
the Daily Bugle building
the Morlock Alley
the Hellfire Club
Sanctum Sanctorum
Empire State University
Charles Xaviers’ School for Gifted Youngsters
Emma Frost’s Massachussetts’ Academy
Forge’s Aerie
Hydrobase / Avenger’s Island
S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier
Muir Isle
Cassidy Keep
Atlantis
Avalon
Wundagore Mountain
Latveria
Wakanda
Genosha
Olympia (Eternals’ city)
Lemuria
the Savage Land
Monster Island
Subterranea
Asteroid M
Magneto’s Avalon
the Blue Area of the moon (including Uatu’s dome & Attilan)
Titan
Uranos
Asgard
Olympus
Limbo (Immortus’s realm)
Limbo (Belasco’s realm)
Galactus’ worldship
the Beyonder’s Battleworld
But I know I must be missing a lot more. What other fictional destinations might be included in this list?
(And eventually, I’ll get around to a DC Universe one too.)
The Avengers West compound
Richmond Riding Academy (former Defenders headquarters)
Hell (“Satan’s” realm)
Hell (Mephisto’s realm)
Counter-Earth
Land of the Cat People (where Tigra’s mentor was from)
Dormamu’s dimension
The Orb of Agamatto
The Purple Gem dimension
Earth (Squadron Supreme)
Earth (innumerable alternates, some of which were seen in What If?)
Man-Thing’s swamp, including the Nexus of All Realities
Some of these locales move. Atillan was originally in the Alps, then the Himalayas, the moon, and now it’s somewhere in the Atlantic (I think). They move it on purpose to keep it hidden. Ditto Olympia.
Wakanda tends to be wherever it needs to be for a given story. Don McGregor drew a map of it, placing it on the Atlantic coast, presumably near the Cingo River (It has a jungle, and all African jungle is in the Cingo region). A later story put it on the border of South Africa. An issue of Daredevil featured a Wakandan expatriate, the Golden Gloder, who had a map of Africa on the back of his jackewt with an arrow pointing to Wakanda; the arrow pointed to a wildly different spot from one panel to the next.
How about Red Raven’s floating island (last seen in the Defenders/Order series)?
Or Demonia (Dr. Demonicus’ island from West Coast Avengers), Fasaud’s middle-eastern kingdom, or Wyatt Wingfoot’s Keewazi Reservation? Or Dormammu’s Dark Dimension? Or Yancy Street?
The Negative Zone
The Microverse(s)
Jarella’s world
The M’Kraan (sp?) crystal (X-men)
The Crossroads (where Hulk was trapped c. issue 200)
Alt-Earths from Excalibre
The Siege Perilous
The Reavers’ compound (temporary X-men HQ)
According to that, Wakanda is between Chad and Nigeria; Latveria is between Hungary and Romania/Transylvania; and Monster Island is roughly between Hokkaido and Honshu.
The second edition of The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe (a series of comics giving the straight dope on the various Marvel characters and places in alphabetical order) had an entry for “Manhattan”, showing a map of the city and significant locations circa 1986 (the upper half is recorded here), including the Avengers’ mansion, Dr. Strange’s Sanctum Sanctorium and Peter Parker’s apartment.
Okay, so the additions to my list so far include -
The Avengers West compound
Richmond Riding Academy (former Defenders headquarters)
Hell (“Satan’s” realm)
Hell (Mephisto’s realm)
Counter-Earth
Land of the Cat People (where Tigra’s mentor was from)
Dormamu’s dimension
The Orb of Agamatto
The Purple Gem dimension
Earth (Squadron Supreme)
Earth (innumerable alternates, some of which were seen in What If?)
Man-Thing’s swamp, including the Nexus of All Realities
Falsworth Castle (home of Union Jack, Spitfire, and Baron Blood).
The ancestral estates of Baron Strucker and Baron Zemo.
The Ancient One’s palace in the Himilayas.
The Himilayan monastery where Dr. Doom forged his armor.
Ku’un Lun
The Negative Zone - (can’t believe I forgot this one!)
The Microverse(s) - (or this!)
Jarella’s world
The M’Kraan (sp?) crystal (X-men)
The Crossroads (where Hulk was trapped c. issue 200)
Alt-Earths from Excalibre
The Reavers’ compound (temporary X-men HQ)
Skrullos
Kree homeworld
Shi’ar throneworld
Pantheon HQ
Gamma Base
Hulkbusters Base
Coffee Bean
and Madripoor.
But isn’t/wasn’t the Siege Perilous a device rather than a place? Maybe I’m not remembering it right, but I thought it was a gateway into the past - enabling the various X-Men to relive their lives differently.
Latveria sounds about right. Wakanda has to be (a) sub-Saharan and (b) jungle, so it can’t be there; I’d put it closer to the Angolan exclave of Cabinda.
Would it blur the continuum between reality and the Marvel Universe if I pointed out that my wife Skulldigger has her B.A. degree from Empire State University?
Official Handbook to the Marvel Universe: Deluxe Edition cites Wakanda as being in equatorial Africa which would put it anywhere between the Congo, Zaire and Kenya.
