Marvel Universe
The Marvel Universe is a fictional shared universe where the stories in most American comic book titles and other media published by Marvel Comics take place. Super-teams such as the Avengers, the X-Men, the Fantastic Four, the Guardians of the Galaxy, and many Marvel superheroes live in this universe, including characters such as Spider-Man, Captain America, Iron Man, Thor, the Hulk, Ant-Man, the Wasp, Wolverine, Black Panther, Doctor Strange, Daredevil, and Captain Marvel, Blade, Black Widow, Hawkeye, among numerous others. It also contains well-known supervillains such as Doctor Doom, Magneto, Ultron, Thanos, Loki, The Green Goblin, Kang the Conqueror, Red Skull, The Kingpin, Doctor Octopus, Carnage, Apocalypse, Dormammu, Mysterio, Electro, and the Vulture. It also contains antiheroes such as Venom, Namor, Deadpool, Silver Sable, Ghost Rider, The Punisher, and Black Cat. The Marvel Universe is further depicted as existing within a "multiverse" consisting of thousands of separate universes, all of which are the creations of Marvel Comics and all of which are, in a sense, "Marvel universes". In this context, "Marvel Universe" is taken to refer to the mainstream Marvel continuity, which is known as Earth-616 or currently as Prime Earth. Some of Timely Comics (the 1930s and '40s predecessor to Marvel Comics) characters coexisted in the same world was first established in Marvel Mystery Comics #7 (1940) where Namor was mentioned in Human Torch's story, and vice versa. Later several superheroes (who starred in separate stories in the series up to that point) met each other in a group dubbed the All-Winners Squad. Though the concept of a shared universe was not new or unique to comic books in 1961, writer/editor Stan Lee, together with several artists including Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, created a series of titles where events in one book would have repercussions in another title and serialized stories would show characters' growth and change. Headline characters in one title would make cameos or guest appearances in other books.
