General Marvel Legends

fac said:
I forgot they brought Conan into the "modern" world.

Like I said, more a personal preference - they don't seem like Marvel characters per se.
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No, I get that. Like, there's a bunch of one-off appearances/collabs that I would not consider if planning a Marvel display. Like the new DC/Marvel crossover stuff doesn't mean Batman is now a Marvel character.

But in the specific case of Conan, for good or ill, he is -officially- a member of a Marvel team that had an ongoing, if somewhat short-lived, book. On the other hand, he was in the What If... book many years ago where he and Wolverine swapped places, and in another one where he became an Avenger, and in both cases I never considered Conan an actual Marvel character.
It's definitely... weird.
 
fac said:
I feel those characters, like the horror guys like Dracula and Franky, don't really fit with the Marvel display given they are licensed characters that have their own story outside of Marvel. I know they did some crossovers but it seems weird to me, like if they had a comic where WWII Captain America meet Indiana Jones, that doesn't mean Indiana goes on my Marvel shelf.
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Hard disagree. First off, Dracula and Frankenstein's Creature are not licensed characters. Marvel has their own specific versions of those characters that they own outright. Their stories were always set firmly in the Marvel Universe, and characters created FOR THOSE BOOKS have spun off into their own titles (see Blade, for instance). Dracula, most especially, has been an antagonist in major arcs for Avengers, Defenders, Dr. Strange, X-Men, etc., and is still menacing Marvel characters to this day.

Second, while the character of Conan was licensed, his mythology is still firmly part of the Marvel Universe. Ever since Marvel first started publishing Conan, other books made reference to the lore of the Hyborian Age. The Avengers dealt with the Stygian snake god, Set, and all of the Serpent Crown stuff ties directly to that. Kulan Gath, as already noted, was a Red Sonja villain created by Marvel (that they still own the rights to, though they have allowed Dynamite to use the character), that then faced off against basically all the Marvel heroes. Heck, Mary Jane Watson is CANONICALLY a descendant of Red Sonja! Oh, and then there is Shuma Gorath...who has appeared in a freakin' MCU film. Sure, they can't use the name Shuma Gorath legally, but his entire history and interaction with characters like Dr. Strange has him with far more appearances in the superhero books than he ever had in the Conan books or comics.

So, while Conan isn't *owned* by Marvel, his history in the 616 is way too intertwined to parse him out from Marvel continuity. Red Sonja was actually created as a unique Marvel character set in Conan's time, loosely based on Howard's Sonya of Rogatino (that Sonya lived in the 1500's, not the Hyborean Age). It's only due to the fact that there was a loose connection to the Howard character that Marvel doesn't own the character outright, and ultimately lost the rights (I won't bore anyone with the legal tangles that plagued the character for years).

There is absolutely nothing wrong with you choosing to exclude the characters from your display...because it's your display and you can do whatever you want with it. I just think many folks who didn't grow up in the seventies and eighties don't realize how much of the world of Conan was made official history of the 616 Universe, and how it still impacts the Marvel books to this day.
 
That's a compelling and accurate argument but I still find it odd. Its more that these characters were created outside of the Marvel Universe and existed outside of it for a long time. To me they are characters that Marvel is using and expanding on - which is fine, same can be said for many characters as you note, plus more besides (Fu Manchu, Machine Man started in 2001, and so on - let alone Micronauts and Rom, although their stories were created in the comic). But the initial characters are not Marvel.

I was reading the comics in the 70's and 80's and truthfully I didn't much care for it at the time either. Oddly it felt untrue to the Marvel ethos of superheroes in the "real world" of NYC and celebrities and trends, to then tie that into characters that should have been part of the literature of that world. It made things a mishmash that the Hyborian Age was a real thing while at the same time the Marvel characters would reference Star Wars or Indiana Jones or the Wizard of Oz as characters they knew of, while others characters like Dracula and Conan were "real" to them and part of history.

(I should note that I know many collectors say they want character X made in 1:12 scale so that they can have Luke Skywalker, Iron Man, Gandalf and X all interacting - which to me is like listening to an album while watching TV or putting chocolate syrup on a steak - some things just don't go together.)

And...it always seemed more like a marketing ploy to connect them all. Of course it actually worked in my case, my reading the Micronauts when they met up with the FF and SHIELD helped lead me to more of the main titles.
 
fac said:
(I should note that I know many collectors say they want character X made in 1:12 scale so that they can have Luke Skywalker, Iron Man, Gandalf and X all interacting - which to me is like listening to an album while watching TV or putting chocolate syrup on a steak - some things just don't go together.)
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I like to do this, or see other people do it, in limited ways. Like I get a kick out of someone's "Saturday Morning Cartoons" shelf. Or just the 'favorite heroes of my childhood' shelf. It's not something I really do myself, at least not for longer than a single day. But it can be fun, for sure.
 
Damien said:
I like to do this, or see other people do it, in limited ways. Like I get a kick out of someone's "Saturday Morning Cartoons" shelf. Or just the 'favorite heroes of my childhood' shelf. It's not something I really do myself, at least not for longer than a single day. But it can be fun, for sure.
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And I suspect those who do that are more amenable to thinking about Conan being a Marvel Superhero than I am!
 
fac said:
And I suspect those who do that are more amenable to thinking about Conan being a Marvel Superhero than I am!
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Quite possibly.
To be fair, I'd say most people that display like that also don't seem TOO fussed that the figures aren't the same scale. It's just one of those 'wouldn't it be cool if...' kind of things.
 
fac said:
That's a compelling and accurate argument but I still find it odd. Its more that these characters were created outside of the Marvel Universe and existed outside of it for a long time. To me they are characters that Marvel is using and expanding on - which is fine, same can be said for many characters as you note, plus more besides (Fu Manchu, Machine Man started in 2001, and so on - let alone Micronauts and Rom, although their stories were created in the comic). But the initial characters are not Marvel.

I was reading the comics in the 70's and 80's and truthfully I didn't much care for it at the time either. Oddly it felt untrue to the Marvel ethos of superheroes in the "real world" of NYC and celebrities and trends, to then tie that into characters that should have been part of the literature of that world. It made things a mishmash that the Hyborian Age was a real thing while at the same time the Marvel characters would reference Star Wars or Indiana Jones or the Wizard of Oz as characters they knew of, while others characters like Dracula and Conan were "real" to them and part of history.

(I should note that I know many collectors say they want character X made in 1:12 scale so that they can have Luke Skywalker, Iron Man, Gandalf and X all interacting - which to me is like listening to an album while watching TV or putting chocolate syrup on a steak - some things just don't go together.)

And...it always seemed more like a marketing ploy to connect them all. Of course it actually worked in my case, my reading the Micronauts when they met up with the FF and SHIELD helped lead me to more of the main titles.
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I completely see where you are coming from on this. For me, I guess it just ties back to the fact that Marvel was always a little weird with this stuff. Like, the Fantastic Four had their own comic title IN the Marvel Universe, and Micronauts toys showed up IN the Micronauts book. In my head, I just always figured that the Conan stories were known in the "real" world of Marvel as part of the Nemedian Chronicles, which Howard established in his lore as being the transcribed tales found by archaeologists.

Now, I don't go mixing in Gandalf & Luke Skywalker in my displays, but to each their own. I have a dedicated Conan display, but I still keep the ToyBiz/Marvel Toys Legend figure over with the ML display as well. I kinda liken it to the idea that if there are other versions of Spider-Man running around the Multiverse, then it makes sense Conan exists in multiple universes as well.
 
And it's also worth noting that even in a world where a fictional character is real, there can still be other fictional characters that are just fictional. I compare it to fantasy writing; you can write a world with actual dragons, where people also tell stories about unicorns, but unicorns don't actually exist in your world. These ideas can coexist.
 
I'm with Fac on Conan. It's like Optimus Prime showing up in Narnia.

That said, I wish more lines were compatible. I wouldn't have Daredevil team up with Johnny Quest, but it'd be cool to have the option. (In before someone requests Johnny Quest figures.)

I love Damien's idea of a Saturday morning cartoon shelf. Luke, Cap, He-Man, and whoever else is a near-perfect work display.
 
I know this isn't what you mean but I recently filled in my many holes in my 70s Marvel Conan series. It is fantastic. Barry Windsor Smith, John Buscema, Howard Chaykin. One of Marvel's best series. Maintains a pretty high quality level for nearly 200 issues. That series is at its best when it stays smaller and more grounded and connects less to anything but Howard's world and Marvel's own expounding on that world.

I see no contradiction in Dracula in the Marvel world being different from Bram Stoker's Dracula but both existing. Dracula himself references it in the Colan series. Calls Stoker a fool for believing all the stories about him and using it to write a novel. Colan's Dracula isn't commonly believed to exist by the world at large. He's like Bigfoot or something. At least in the original series. I can't speak to the albino Dracula in the Gary Oldman armor. I assume he lead yet another tiresome invasion of earth that was an event tying in 12 different comic titles that had half the Marvel Universe boringly fighting yet another mass invasion. Yawn.

I have a shelf with "classic comics characters" on it. Nancy, Sluggo, Little Lulu, Tubby, Jim Woodring characters, Daniel Clowes' Enid, Drinky Crow, Uncle Gabby, Alfred E Newman, Charlie Brown, Barks' Ducks, Thimble Theatre characters, EC's Crypt Keeper, etc. Wish they made more characters I could fit there. Would love to add a Maggie and Hopey, Krazy Kat, Ignatz, Pogo, Albert Alligator, etc.
 
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Conan and Sonja are 100% canonical members of the Marvel Universe for me and the reason why is easy - they were part of 7-11's Marvel Slurpee cup line up.

I was collecting those at 5 years old and it is defining for me. Conan and Sonja both had cups right alongside Hulk, Spider-Man, Iron Man and Black Panther. The slurpee cup line up cemented their place in the Marvel Universe even more than the comics did in my young brain. Its for this reason that King Kull, Dracula and Doc Savage are all also firmly part of the Marvel Universe
 
I only have two shelves that really mix and match licenses - but I think y'all will get it.

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All the one-off characters I've collected over the years, or my favorite figures of favorite actors. The scale being off doesn't bother me on this shelf - it's a feature, not a bug.

What does bug me is Felicity and Dark Angel are not nearly as important as anyone else on that shelf, but I have no other place to put them and they're not worth anything or putting in a box. And my Entranced Galadriel is currently elsewhere because her box doesn't fit.

I have a male version of this shelf, which was incidental - the shelf above was the point - and a friend couldn't figure out the theme of said shelf. She said "hair?"
 
TheGillMan said:
In my head, I just always figured that the Conan stories were known in the "real" world of Marvel as part of the Nemedian Chronicles, which Howard established in his lore as being the transcribed tales found by archaeologists.
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I could go along with this...that's a No Prize from me.

Damien said:
And it's also worth noting that even in a world where a fictional character is real, there can still be other fictional characters that are just fictional.
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Sure, and I agree, but I think a good fictional world has some guardrails. Kind of how I do not like time travel in Star Wars - it seems off.

TheSameIdiot said:
I love Damien's idea of a Saturday morning cartoon shelf.
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I have (or had at least) one of those...
 
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