By James Johnston

NYU has a well-known list of famous alumni. Aziz Ansari, Ilana Glazer and Martin Scorcese are among some of the most popular people in the world, known for their contributions to music, comedy, and film. But how many of them have stopped crime? Have any of them saved the world? Can Alec Baldwin even fire lasers from his eyes or did I just fall asleep and have a weird dream during Glengarry Glenn Ross? NYU may have some acclaimed alumni, but none of them are superheroes — in this reality, at least.

One of the ideas that made Marvel Comics so popular in the 60s was how all its heroes lived in “our world.” Daredevil was from Hell’s Kitchen, Steve Rogers lived in Brooklyn before he became Captain America, and Dr. Strange’s clinic is located right in Greenwich Village. As you may have noticed, “our world” seems to exclusively consist of New York locations presumably because comic god Stan Lee, when making a new character, would look out his Midtown office window, say “Good enough!,” and then take a lunch break. We think.

For years, this idea of inserting these fictional characters into our landscape worked wonders for the company. So well in fact, that it led to the creation of Spider-Man, who is arguably one of the more well known superheroes in the Marvel universe. After all, Andrew Garfield plays him in that movie franchise (the second one). Anyway, Peter Parker started out as a high school student at a Midtown High before he grew up and decided to attend college. Since Peter’s personal life was intertwined with his superhero duties, Stan Lee and artist Steve Ditko didn’t want to remove him too far from the city and thus placed him in the fictional Empire State University where he meets Gwen Stacy and Harry Osborn. And when it came time for other Marvel characters to attend college, every other writer threw their hands up in the air and sent them to ESU. And over more time, ESU morphed into a thinly veiled pastiche of NYU.

As Peter Sanderson explains in his book The Marvel Comics Guide to New York City, it’s been assumed from The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe from the 80’s that ESU is located by Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village. That already sounds like a compelling argument for ESU/NYU comparisons. In addition, if you look at the 2002 miniseries “Chamber” (which no one read) the titular character attends ESU and in a place called Brittany Hall. Familiar?

So we can’t help but wonder, if Marvel’s college-age characters attend ESU, are their experiences anything like an average NYU student’s? Well one of Spider-Man’s professors, Miles Warren, dressed up in a fur suit, called himself the Jackal, and cloned Peter Parker’s dead girlfriend as part of a long-term plan to mentally destroy his student. So, maybe? I hear Stern is pretty intense.

In recent years, Marvel’s been more transparent and sent some of its characters right to NYU. Squirell Girl recently began taking classes in between fighting Doctor Doom and Thanos, while the backstory of teen hero Gravity revolved around him moving from Wisconsin to New York to attend NYU.

With all these heroes in our midst, you might want to look around during your next seminar and remember that any of your classmates could actually be a superhero. No, really. Donald Glover was part of the “Donald for Spider-Man” campaign for the Amazing Spider-Man reboot a few years back and is now voicing Miles Morales (an alternate universe Spider-Man) on the Ultimate Spider-Man cartoon.

Speaking of Spider-Man films, Spider-Man didn’t go to ESU or NYU and attended Columbia in the Toby Maguire film trilogy. That series didn’t last very long. Also, do any of these guys pay tuition?

[image via Eric Eidelstein]