Doctor Who has been published by Marvel Comics in the US, so what if the character appeared in a Marvel film? Do you think it would work? If not, why not?

As for me, I would love it if the Doctor came face to face with Thanos, or working with the Hulk on something. Perhaps a bit of byplay with Stark and Rogers...

I think I know what's coming...

I'm pretty sure that in the early days of DW Weekly/Monthly, Marvel also produced it in the UK too.

It would be interesting but I see the Doctor as more of an associate rather than member of the marvel universe.

However, if memory serves, back in the very early 80s, Power Man and Iron Fist worked with a mysterious professor who lived in a bookshop that was oddly bigger on the inside than outside. When they went to thank him at the end of the adventure, the shop had oddly vanished!

Or...did I dream that??

The 11th Doctor has appeared in a crossover in the Star Trek prime universe too in the comics. He fought the Borg/Cybermen alongside Picard and the TNG crew. TNG itself has had crossovers with Marvel's X-Men. The X-Men are not in the MCU (due mainly, I think, to Marvel not owning the film rights to the X-Men), but the link is there.

And I thought travel to other universes was supposed to be next to impossible, even with a TARDIS.

Or was that just Pete's world?

Was it really a case of "say anything to get away from a gf you've grown tired of"?

To be fair the doctors comic was actually produced by marvel uk, a British outpost, back in a the day.

Before it's bankruptcy marvel UK was producing its own range of British characters. Knight of pendragon, dark angel, killpower and motormouth, and others.

The seventh doctor as quite ties to, possibly the most successful, marvel UK character.

The time travelling, robot, bounty hunt..... Err, 'freelance peacekeeping agent'. Deaths head.

Death head, actually started out as giant robot who fought the transformers. Making him the only marvel character to meet both the transformers and the doctor.

Have you guys been listening to the nerds I work with? We have had the very same conversation. And yes it concluded with the eventual realisation that Deaths Head is the legitimate choice of character to appear.

Only for a short cameo where Tony Stark does his usual crashing into buildings, sees the Doctor and K-9, grabs K-9 and says "I'm stealing this"

Ah. Memories, yes?

RE: the old Doctor Who Weekly. No less than Alan Moore wrote a handful of back-up strips for that comic back in the day (circa 1981). Obviously, in the context of his personal body work it's insignificant but for for both a Who fan and a Moore connoisseur like me they're amusing to read. The timing of the creation of his earliest published works is a bit nebulous but it's also quite possibly his first professionally published serialized comic strip work, with captain Britain and the Warrior strips (V For Vendetta and Marvelman) coming very soon afterwards (for pedants: his Sounds strips, beginning with Roscoe Moscow are more properly cartoon strips). Where is the relevance? In those back-up strips Moore introduced a cadre of characters called 'the Special Executive' who later reappeared in his Captain Britain run, bringing them squarely into the 'Marvel universe', and by default, also the Doctor and his world. So more grist for the mill for those wanting to conflate the two 'universes'.

But staying with this theme of our nerdy UK comic collecting youths Spider-man is also a part of the Transformers world if we judge by his appearance in an early issue (I think #3?) of the US Transformers comic book, reprinted of course in the legendary (in our circles) UK Transformers title. So there Death's Head forms another little bridge between Doctor Who / Transformers / Marvel 'Universe'.

Of course, this kind of fun pedantry aside we all know in our hearts the idea of the two 'universes' being connected is ultimately more than a little silly and not something to be seriously pursued.

(by the way, as a footnote to the above: Alan Moore was actually approached during the Andrew Cartmel era as showrunner to write for the Doctor Who TV show but had no interest. His influence can be pretty clearly seen in the Doctor's farewell speech to Mel, which reads very much like something cribbed from Doc Manhatten in Watchmen. For the record, Moore dislikes Doctor who)

What other fictional "universes" has the Doctor appeared in?

So far we have:

Marvel
Star Trek
Eastenders

Any others known?

Sherlock...if you believe all that about the Tardis in the woods!

Oh, and Chelmsford 123 and with Robots of Sherwood, you could argue Robin Hood too!

I am really enjoying the expansion of Marvel's Netflix TV universe - first Daredevil, then Jessica Jones and now Luke Cage: Power Man and (I think) Ironfist. All leading into the first Marvel Defenders TV event.

It felt like Doctor Who was headed this way before SJA and Torchwood concluded. I am hoping Class might kick-start this expansion again.

And for a Marvel cross-over, I'd like to see the Doctor take on one of the Marvel alien monsters - Venom springs to mind.

Come Outside. Before becoming an Eternal pirate, Captain Wrack lived in a lovely English cottage with her dog Pippin where she spent a lot of time talking to herself.

On a serious note though, I know one of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer comics had a sneaky-looking pair standing in front of a telephone box once.

He also appears in Lego Dimensions, and if you include that it opens up a multitude of other connections, including: Back to the Future, Jurassic Park, Lord of the Rings, The Simpsons, Ghostbusters, DC Comics and Scooby-Doo!

Not Doctor Who related in the slightest but can Zoids also be included in the MCU please? (Mainly because I miss the Zoids and they hardly ever get a mention anywhere). I used to collect the Spiderman and Zoids comic, and although I don't think they shared stories they did share a comic so that counts too surely?

Marvel and DC - surely the ultimate crossover that will never happen (unless both companies are in dire straits and need the money!)

Sherlock Holmes is definitely fictional in the Who Universe....but sure there's a way around it! Eleven's "play the fool and get the info" scene as 'Sherlock' in The Snowmen was good fun. "Do you own a goldfish called Colin?" "No." "I thought so."

Perhaps. Seeing as they decided to make Robin Hood real.

It did happen. Infact, at one point the marvel and DC universes were merged into the 'amalgam universe'.

Their separate characters where blended into weird new hero's.

Super soldier, Bruce wayne: agent of shield, spiderboy, JLX, iron lantern, ect.....

Wonder Woman beaten by Storm in a dual - pah! What nonsense that series was.

Really!? I had no idea!

I thought DC and Marvel were fierce rivals.

Well, a junior version of Doctor No. 3 is currently Bruce Wayne's butler and MIssey seems to be popping up in Gotham as well!

It has happened:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DC_vs._Marvel

It wouldn't surprise me if all of those assets (Marvel & DC) end up with the same owner at some point. The American comic book industry has become such a niche industry that it's only real commercial value now is in the licensable assets to the film industry. For a long time (at least 30 years) DC comics has been unprofitable in its own right, sustained by its parent company Warner Bros as a loss leader simply to hang onto the lucrative merchandising properties like Superman and Batman. Marvel comics has been similarly been a money sink, going through bankruptcy and changes of ownership.

The bottom line being that either of those companies long since stopped being commercially viable unless they have a parent company underwriting their losses so as to secure rights to those 'iconic' (read 'merchandisable') characters. Eventually some company will have the bright idea to simply buy it all up so they can do that shitty Spider-man vs Batman film and the attendant t-shirts and mugs and forget that whole unprofitable publishing comics malarkey.

When / why did Marvel and DC stop being commercially viable companies in their own right? Big question; huge topic, but the onset of the 'direct market' in the 1980s, which moved their product almost exclusively into specialist stores (comic shops) and for the most part off the news stands was surely the biggest factor, coupled with incredibly narrow-minded, short-term profit oriented creative / publishing strategies that looked to bleed dry it's tiny, niche fanbase (their incestuous superhero 'universes', long since made unapproachable to new readers, for those unfamiliar with comic books, are basically professional fan fiction), rather than grow the industry with varied, quality content.

Put simply: it's what would happen to Doctor Who if they started making it only for the 'fans', and not the general audience (whew, found a way to vaguely bring that whole editorial on topic :P).


How fierce a rivalry can they really have when 95% of their creative talent (and even a lot of their non-creative staff) have worked for both companies? The two companies are not directly co-operative but they both depend upon the health of the fore-mentioned 'direct market' to distribute their product and so both have a vested interest in keeping it healthy. The demise of either company could only be detrimental to it, so their competition is really a healthy one, not a cut-throat one.

On top of that, and not to belabour the point, but anyone new to comic books, or who reads them but has no real idea about the business side of them has to understand that it is largely an industry where the inmates run the asylum, so to speak. To call their business decisions 'strategies' would be a misnomer.

If there is a concept wherein they can maximize short-term sales by pushing more product on to their established audience then you can bet they'll do it... and isn't Marvel vs DC the epitome of that? I'm only surprised they haven't done it again more recently. I would guess the biggest factor against doing it is the logistics of making it happen vs the small profit they'd make from it, when it's easier and probably just as saleable to create a new 'company-wide' crossover 'event' to entice their bled-dry readership to buy every one of their titles, without all of the hassle of inter-company communication / co-operation / promotion etc.

I guess I was displaying my ignorance of the superhero comic world (or should that be "universe" ). I haven't read any superhero comics since I was a teenager (a long time ago!) but I have recently enjoyed the MCU movies and Daredevil and Jessica Jones. The movies are simply a lot of fun with grand spectacle, and the TV shows I mention seem to have believable characters within the superhero premise.

In the current comics, the van that the All-New X-Men go around in, is bigger on the inside, like the TARDIS (Pym Particle tech, probably, as Beast is known to have access to Ant-Man's technology). Interestingly, of the seven X-Men in this group, four of them are time travellers (1960s Cyclops, Angel, Beast and Iceman, said to be from the past, but due to comic book time, more likely to be from an alternate universe).
Friendly rivals. Marvel calls DC the DIstinguished Competition.