TIL from Eternals that DC characters exist in the Marvel Universe. Are they "real" people/superheroes in Marvel or fictional?

Cafe Society
1

Batman, Alfred, and Superman are all mentioned in the movie, though it’s not clear if they are “real” or fictional characters in the Marvel universe. If they are fictional, it seems a bit of a backhanded swipe at the rival property that “our heroes are real, yours aren’t”. If they are real, then is there a reason given that Marvel superheroes don’t regularly at least talk about how Superman, Batman, etc are saving the world from time to time?

Does DC do the same thing (reference Marvel supes)? I’m no Marvel or DC junkie, but I have seen all the movies and a few streaming series, but not read any comics. I have a vague recollection that there was some kind of crossover series done between the two properties in comic form a long time ago, but that’s hazy.

2

I read All of the Marvels, the book written by a guy who went back and read all the Marvel Comics. He makes the point that not only did almost everybody in the business work for both companies at one point or another, but that they were friends and roommates. They loved to put in digs, references, and allusions to the other guys, especially if they could sneak them past the editors. Relations between the companies varied from neutrality to outright hatred at various points, so this was easier to do at some times than others.

So even beside the many official crossovers DC and Marvel jointly released, somebody who was looking at all the tiny details in the background art could find images or mentions of characters from the other universe. He found many of these. What they were supposed to mean wasn’t usually clear, because they were put in guerilla style. Some looked like fictional characters in comic books, others just appeared in crowd scenes, most were fourth-wall-breaking in-group shout-outs to fans.

He talked about them mostly in passing, so I’d have to reread the entire book to find them again. Probably some of the real comic fanatics here know more. But I did find this Quora page with a number of examples.

3

In the MCU, the DC characters would have to be fictional. Marvel doesn’t have the film rights to all of its own characters, much less the DC characters. I don’t recall any references to Marvel characters in the DCEU movies, but in the DC/CW series The Flash, characters occasionally mention Marvel characters and movies as fictional, pop culture references.

In the comics, there were quite a few aborted attempts at crossovers. Back in the 70s, there were a handful of cross-overs that actually got published. They were one-offs; in that specifici issue, the characters were portrayed as existing in the same world and as always having been, they just hadn’t run into each other before. Outside of those one-off issues, though, those encounters were never directly referenced, and the characters existed in totally separate continuities. Writers and artists would occasionally slip in oblique references as in-jokes, but nothing official.

There were also analogs of the other company’s characters that would appear from time to time. Marvel’s Squadron Supreme, for example, were a team of heroes from an alternate universe that were remarkably similar to the then current line-up of DC’s Justice League (the story is, the writer of Avengers at the time tried to arrange an official cross-over, couldn’t get it approved, and so he just wrote the story anyway, with thinly disguised analogs).

Marvel and DC have done a few official, in-continuity cross-overs. In the 90s, they co-published the Marvel vs. DC limited series and the Amalgam comics event (where both companies published “amalgam” comics that combined aspects of their characters, like Dr. Strangefate who combined elements of Dr. Strange and Dr. Fate). That series introduced a new character, Access, who’s powers were supposed to let him travel between the DC and Marvel multiverses, and he was co-owned by both companies. He’s only had a handful of appearances since then, though, and I don’t think he’s even referenced the other company’s characters in those.

In 2003-4, they co-produced the JLA/Avengers limited series, where the JLA and the Avengers met each other in what at the time was supposed to be an official in-continuity event for both titles. I think they’ve had a couple of other more recent cross-overs that were similarly supposed to be in-continuity.

In those cases, the Marvel universe and the DC universe were portrayed as separate universes, even separate multiverses, and the cross-over was in-continuity a cross-over between different universes.

So, long story short, the DC and Marvel characters potentially exist in parallel multiverses and can cross over, but officially they don’t co-exist in the same world.

4

A few other examples:

5

For a time I was keeping a list of every time DC and Marvel referenced each other, adding to it whenever I encountered a new one. Then I decided I needed fewer projects to maintain and gave it up.

6

Unless it’s an official crossover, any references to a rival company’s characters are going to be pop culture references in-story. As the underdog during the Silver Age, Marvel continually made cracks about the more successful and prestigious “Brand Echh” (DC), but mostly in the letters pages and never by its real name. As the big dog, DC considered Marvel unworthy of even joking about.

7

The DC villain Funky Flashman was an homage to/parody of/character assassination of Marvel editor Stan Lee. In the stories I have read, he was usually portrayed as something of a buffoon.

8

That was largely the work of Jack Kirby, after he left Marvel to go to DC, working out his own issues with Stan.

9

Kirby also had a character named Houseroy which was a jab at Stan’s right hand man, Roy Thomas. But this was after the era I was talking about and the insults were personal, not corporate. Kirby was probably the only creator at the time who had the clout to get away with that kind of thing…or the management at DC just wasn’t paying attention.

10

Silver Age DC would spoof Marvel in Inferioir Five, but I think that’s it.

A 1967 DC reference to Marvel in a non-spoof title can be found here. Certainly has that “big dog” attitude of superiority.

Not always. Sometimes the cameo appearances add up until you have Clark Kent as a minor Marvel character.

I believe the idea was to do a stealth crossover, having the Avengers meet a Justice League-esque team and vice versa, but while the Avengers met the Squadron Sinister it was toned down on the Justice League side. The JLA fights their evil duplicates, with the Batman duplicate throwing a trashcan lid, the Hawkman duplicate claiming to be “strong as iron” and “modern as a transistor”, the Atom duplicate growing larger like Giant-Man, etc. That’s as far as it goes. The Avengers-esque Champions of Angor would come a few years later.

11

Dave Cockrum, who was an artist for DC’s Legion of Super-Heroes, came over to Marvel in the mid-70s and did a pastiche of that group for the revitalized X-Men called The Imperial Guard. As powerful as that group was, they came off as nearly incompetent as the Legion.

Cockrum had in fact created Nightcrawler, a star of the new X-Men, as a Legion member, but the editors at DC nixed it. One man’s trash…

12

In the regular Marvel universe the DC heroes are fictional I believe.

However there is this alternate earth(read the comments section near bottom for explanation):

http://www.marvunapp.com/Appendix3/earthcrossoverall.htm

13

Just in case it’s not clear, that page is pure fanwank, a truly ambitious effort to try to create a coherent fan-fic continuity including as many non-continuity one-shot Marvel cross-overs with other properties as possible, including not just DC characters, but also Image/WildStorm characters, creator-owned indie comic characters, Archie Comics(!) characters, and others.

14

Shortly after DC released Crisis on Infinite Earths, a character who called himself “Buried Alien” made a brief appearance in the Marvel main continuity. He had lost his memory and “Buried Alien” was the closest approximation he could come up with to his real name. He was also a blonde speedster who wore a red costume with yellow highlights and yellow boots. He won a race between several speedsters and was thereby dubbed the “fastest man alive”.

“Buried Alien” == Barry Allen

15

Clicked on this thread, just to see if someone mentioned this. :+1:t6:

16

Here’s Cockrum’s Legion of Superheroes pitch for Nightcrawler. His appearance and powers are similar, though his personality is much different.

17

They’re both officially part of the same greater ‘omniverse’, and, in the comics the multiverses have crossed over (as well as with various non-superhero franchises). But, for the most part, they’re fictional characters, and sometimes analogues (rather than direct alternates) to local persons.

(Being ‘real, but in another universe’ and ‘fictional in this universe’ are not contradictory - several characters are explicitly both, at least over in the DC multiverse corner of the Omniverse. I THINK Marvel has also done the same, but it hasn’t been a significant part of the way their multiverse works, as it has been with DC’s.)

18

At one point in DC’s multiverse, there was an “Earth Prime,” which was the real world, where Superman and Batman and all of them were fictional.

In Marvel comics, the character Gwenpool is, supposedly, also from “our” world, where she was a huge comic book geek, and knows all sorts of secrets about Marvel heroes, like secret names and stuff like that. She assumes that she’s having some sort of extended coma dream, and doesn’t take anything that happens to her seriously.

19

There was an explicit crossover between Marvel’s Spiderman and Image’s Invinsible pretty recently, which also had a hinted at but not shown crossover with DC’s Batman.

20

And the Imperial Guard and Legion of Superheroes inspired each other in some way, I believe. I forget which came first.