Howard Hughes in the Marvel Universe?

[ffutures]

It's always been obvious that Howard Stark was modelled on Howard Hughes - there's plenty of evidence for this in comics and the movies, e.g. clothing choices, general appearance, lifestyle, etc.

So should we assume that there was no Howard Hughes? In particular, if I want to write a story with Hughes aircraft, such as the Spruce Goose, should I say they were developed by Stark? Or that Stark designed them for Hughes who was the financial head of another company, not its engineering genius? That way there can still be Hughes aircraft around, such as Apache helicopters etc., with Stark doing some of the designing for them when they run into technical problems their own engineers can't handle.

Any thoughts?

[Poll #2007773]

Comments

[jeriendhal.livejournal.com]

There's plenty of room for two womanizing inventors in that universe. Besides, Hughes was primarily concerned with aircraft, and Stark seems more focused on high level physics.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Fair point.

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

Marvel do as they please in all there universes, being the masters of retcon (that is, if they even bother to retcon.) Therefore, as you please.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

True.

[agent13.livejournal.com]

Just to point out, but there's another Hughes analog in the Marvel Comics Universe: Hugh Howards, Helicarrier pilot and mechanic from SHIELD's Godzilla Squad.

http://www.marvunapp.com/Appendix/godzilsq.htm#Hugh_Howards

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Oh good grief. I think I'll ignore that one.

[ggreig]

No problem with rewriting history to say that [insert fictional character here] made a hitherto unrecognised contribution, but reassigning a historical person's achievements entirely to someone else, even if the someone is fictional, feels a bit book-burny. No offence intended by using that description; just trying to explain my emotional reaction to the idea. I know that's not your intention!

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Good point. What I want to do is a crossover with a work of fiction that has Hughes as one of its characters - the things he's shown doing fit Howard Stark pretty well, so that part of it is OK, what I'm thinking is that it would be a nice touch if the fiction existed in the Marvel universe and Tony Stark was annoyed because it wrongly attributed one of Howard's inventions to Hughes, either as a real person or as a fictional character they'd made up to avoid Howard suing them.

[major-clanger.livejournal.com]

The way I see it, Tony Stark and Elon Musk both exist in the MCU (despite the MCU version of Tony Stark clearly being based in large part on Musk*) so I see no reason why Howard Stark and Howard Hughes couldn't co-exist.

(*And I'm convinced Musk is now to some extent consciously adopting the persona of Tony Stark, if only because the MCU has set up Stark as the template for 'charismatic billionaire engineering genius'.)

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Fair point.

[dsample.livejournal.com]

If Howard Stark had tried to build the world's largest aircraft, it would have been impractical because it was made from super expensive light-weight unubtainium, not wood.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

I'll grant you that. OK, Hughes existed in the Marvel universe, he just didn't make one fictional invention, Howard Stark did.