Talk:Marvel Multiverse

Retcon

User:Epsilon the Eternal left the following as a cleanup tag. I think this is more of a talk page issue than cleanup:

If I'm not mistaken, "Earth-5556" being the DWU is a retcon; wasn't it the original intent of the crossovers that the characters shared a universe? I don't know enough myself to know if the page as it currently stands is accurate in that regard.

Anyways, for some more info on that, see the conversation I had with User:Scrooge MacDuck at Talk:N-Space#Name for N-Space. But to explain, when Marvel first used Doctor Who, they treated it like any other licensed property and crossed it over casually. Although the concept of the Marvel multiverse existed then, it wasn't so well-defined outside of the few comics concerned with it. As such, the writers of these comics didn't explicitly mention travel between universes aside from the rare occasion it was a plot element, such as Death's Head traveling from Earth-12085 (the "robot universe"). In the 2000s, when Marvel's practice of universe-numbering and definitions of parallel realities, possible futures and the like was much more popular, they basically used "Earth-5556" to effectively say "Well, the Doctor isn't really part of Earth-616, he's got his own universe." As such, this is a retcon, but it doesn't explicitly contradict or rewrite anything like many retcons do, it just differs from the carefree (possible) authorial intent at the time.

The fact of the matter is, what I just explained isn't something we actually know or can source, it just can be inferred from the way the Marvel Multiverse has grown and changed. If we even were to mention it on this page, which I'm not sure we should, I'm also not sure how we would go about it. I think simply explaining that much of the numerical reality info came long after Marvel actually published DWM should suffice. Chubby Potato ☎ 08:04, 14 August 2021 (UTC)

That was really informative! However, I do still believe a distinction should be made between how the Multiverse was handled when they were publishing Doctor Who comic stories and how they do now. It is also worth mentioning that some Doctor Who stories, such as Contributors is a crossover with Marvel and in continuity with the 1980s stories - Nightcrawler is mentioned to be one of Jay Eales' allies. So it is not entirely true, at least from a Doctor Who perspective, that these universes are separate. Plus, showing that they once shared a universe is good to demonstrate one of the largest crossovers Doctor Who has ever had, as opposed to treating it like it has always been a separate universe.

Epsilon📯 📂

10:14, 14 August 2021 (UTC)

I feel now, considering that more Marvel content is being covered on this Wiki, we really ought to better define which universe is which.

The Marvel Wiki treats characters in Captain Britain and Excalibur as Earth-616 individuals, this page treats them as such, but in practice on the rest of this Wiki, they're treated as residents of the DWU.

If we explain on this page that in the 1980s and 1990s, Marvel didn't distinguish Earth-616 and Earth-5559 like they do now, then we can justify treating characters as residents of "Earth-5559/N-Space/Third Universe/The Doctor's World/etc", y'know?

Epsilon📯 📂

06:38, 27 December 2021 (UTC)