If you’re at all tuned into the media juggernaut that is “anything Marvel/Disney puts out” you’re aware of this whole multiverse thing they have going on. Which gets so wild in the comics Marvel had to have a really big meeting in 2021 to set their own multiverse’s rules for the MCU. Prudent, since that new Dr. Strange movie is literally about the multiverse. But comics are weird. No really they’re really weird, so let’s look at some Marvel trivia facts from the comics that probably won’t be making the multiverse anytime soon. While we’re at it, who wants to place bets on how quickly the MCU ends up breaking its own multiverse’s rules?
1. The Abundant Glove
You all thought Thanos and the Infinity Gauntlet were super cool in Infinity War? Well get ready for the Abundant Glove, which makes its wearer “marginally powerful.”
Just like the Infinity Gauntlet, the Abundant Glove does in fact have its own gems! But instead of the space, reality, mind, power, time, and soul you get an even better set. The compassion, laughter, dance, respect, and dance gems.
Yes. There are two dance gems.
2. That time Iron Man’s armor fell in love with him
Remember how in Iron Man 3 it was revealed that Tony Stark had made a bunch of armor–probably because the art and effects team wanted to have a field day for a bit? Well he also does that in the comics, and while he gets some really cool armor in the comics some of the suits are… Odd.
Like that time Tony Stark made a sentient suit of armor that fell in love with him. Except instead of getting him flowers or sending him nice cards or whatever the armor tortured Stark after tying him to a tree. The armor ends up having a change of heart after Stark suffers from cardiac arrest, and rips out its own cybernetic heart to cram into Stark’s chest.
3. The Thanos-Copter
Okay this one might be cheating a little bit since you see the tail of the Thanos-Copter in Loki for like one shot as an Easter egg. But imagine how much better the final battle in Endgame would have been if Thanos just kind of booped in in a stupid yellow helicopter while the Avengers theme swells and stuff.
4. Doctor Octopus stole Peter Parker’s body
This is actually one of the darker stories in the Spider-Man canon, but getting beat up by Spider-Man so many times gave Doctor Octopus a severe bout of brain damage. Yeah, Doc Ock was basically left bedridden with a bunch of tubes sticking out of him.
But he’s not just a normal octopus, he’s Doctor Octopus. In a classic comic trope Otto Octavius figures out a way to swap bodies with Peter Parker. There’s even a point where Octavius punches someone’s jaw clean off and realizes that Parker had been holding back all this time.
Oops.
Anyway, Parker ends up dying before the mind/body-swap can be reversed. Octavius becomes the new Superior Spider-Man and uh… He kills a lot of people. Eventually Peter Parker comes back through comic shenanigans and Octavius’s mind is plugged into a cloned body of himself.
Comics are weird.
5. Iron Man is actually just body horror
Iron Man comics have a trend of Stark making a specific suit to counter whatever threat happens to be in vogue. Then it’s called the “[that thing]-buster.” You know, the Hulkbuster, Thorbuster, Galactusbuster, and the Ultronbuster.
On the topic of the Ultronbuster, there’s a line of comics that debuted after Endgame in which Tony Stark is fused with his own armor by Ultron and it’s not very pretty.
That line of comics did also give us the Godbuster armor though, whose design is almost straight out of Neon Genesis: Evangelion. So that’s cool.
6. Deadpool killed not just the entire Marvel universe, but the characters that inspired them too.
We all like Deadpool. He’s funny, and his fourth-wall breaking meta humor is kind of what meme culture is now. Wade Wilson fits right in.
Well, he does until he decides that he wants to kill everyone in the Marvel universe. Then, he does.
In a separate (but kind of related) line of comics, Deadpool realizes that he and everyone in the Marvel universe are actually all fictional characters. That’s why they’re always killing and resurrecting each other. So instead of just killing the Marvel universe, he literally decides to kill everyone. Yes. Everyone. He goes on to kill Don Quixote, fish for and hunt Moby Dick, and even ends up with Sherlock Holmes trying to investigate him.
7. Cyclops and the Punch Dimension
We all know Cyclops from the X-Men (which Disney now also owns) and his laser eyes. Those blasts are often described in the comics as “concussive force,” which is a really heady way of saying it’s not a laser, it’s more like a brick getting thrown at you.
Which means, already by definition, Cyclops punches you with his eyes. Some comics describe his powers as coming from the Sun, so his eye punches are solar-powered.
Now there was his kind of dubious meme that Cyclops’s eyes were actually a portal to a “dimension of pure, endless concussive force.” So whenever he opened his eyes he was actually just letting out some of that force into our dimension, like when you turn on the tap to your sink. This dimension has been affectionately called the “Punch Dimension.”
Well in Ultimates 2 the Punch Dimension was made canon.
8. Iron Man basically becomes the worst parts of your local billionaire
Lots of Iron Man here, but it’s not our fault he stores his armor in his bones.
Anyway in the Superior Iron Man run Tony Stark uses the Extremis virus (a version of it makes an appearance in Iron Man 3) to make all of us poor peons super fit and attractive. He does this by putting Extremis in San Francisco’s water supply, and creates an app that lets users “activate” the virus to make them all super hot.
Then he charges everyone $100 per day to stay like that.
Don’t give the billionaires any ideas.
9. The Cancerverse
Death is an actual character in the Marvel multiverse, and in Realm of Kings the powers of life actually defeat her. The power of eternal life gets egged on by these eldritch beings called the “Many-Angled Ones,” and the universe just kind of becomes a giant tumor.
10. Scarlet Witch realizes her babies aren’t real, so she breaks the universe.
If you’ve seen WandaVision, you’re probably kind of aware that Scarlet Witch has some universe-breaking powers. In House of M that gets taken to a new level in which she keeps destructively altering the universe, much to the chagrin of Professor X and Magneto. Eventually Professor X, the X-Men, and the Avengers decide that Wanda Maximoff actually just has to die.
The universe gets changed and broken a handful of times as Maximoff has a bunch of nervous breakdowns, leading to a bunch of big pendulum swings–like Magneto basically ruling the world with his mutant powers, and later every mutant (Magneto included) losing all their powers and becoming normies like us.
