Travelers Company

James Bond has some cool settings, but even the most breathtaking location is no comparison to what has been conjured up in the minds of those doodling comic book geniuses. From stunning island nations complete with secret hideaways to orbiting space stations, comic books never cease to amaze!

Genosha

Genosha: This fictional island country in the Marvel Universe is home to many of the Marvel comic book characters. The island is located off the coast of Africa, just north of the real-world country of Madagascar. It’s described as a beautiful island free of political unrest and has an annoyingly high standard of living due to a fictionally fantastic, non-derivative-based economy. There is one slight caveat in this otherwise perfect comical utopian vision: the economy is dependent on an enslaved mutant population! Genosha is most prominent in X-Men but it is also used as a setting in several other Marvel comics.

Muir Island

Muir Island: This is an important destination in the X-Men Comic book because it’s the home of Earth’s largest complex for mutant research. Muir Island, a small fictional island located off the coast of Scotland, was originally set up by Dr. Moira MacTaggert who needed a base for mutant biological research to help her powerful mutant, but immensely destructive son, Proteus. It is featured in other comic books as well, although the nature of the island is different in other series: for example, in Ultimate Marvel Universe Muir Island was a hospital.

Asteroid M

Asteroid M: Truly viable commercial space travel is soon to become a reality thanks to the pioneering work of Virgin Galactic and others, but in the world of comic books space travel has long since been conquered. In fact, comic book asteroids are more than just target practice for the combined nuclear arsenal of the developed world. In the spirit of sustainable development, these pesky planet killers have been tamed into orbit where they often harbour a base of some sort or other. Marvel’s oft derided and inherently dastardly Magneto has called Asteroid M home, several iterations of which have been destroyed and recreated, but they all have the same basic traits in common, namely multi-level designs with really cool observation decks, hangar bays and a cornucopia of antenna arrays.

Madripoor

Madripoor: This is a fictional island featured in many Marvel Universe comics. Madripoor itself is located in Southeast Asia and is in many ways based upon Singapore, a real-world city close to the island, for its design and social demographics. There is a clear divide on the island: one area is rich and beautiful and the other which is poor and plagued by crime. Visitors to Madripoor stay at the fictional but luxurious Sovereign Hotel and could spend their time exploring the inlets and deep water bays around the island, while dodging mutant criminals and bag thieves. Of course.

Savage Land

Savage Land: Jurassic Park is lame compared to this! Savage Land is a staple of the X-Men series described as a tropical land created on a whim during the Triassic period by an omnipotent and god-like race of aliens called the Beyonders who employed the Nuwali aliens and their vastly superior technology to terraform a valley somewhere on the continent of Antarctica and protect it from the harsh Antarctic climate. Over the millennia Savage Land’s caretakers, the Nuwali, populated the region with prehistoric animals and creatures: even a lost tribe of Atlanteans fleeing the decimation of their city got involved, using their incredible mental prowess to acquire and master the science of genetic engineering, which they used on other inhabitants. Savage Land remained a secret until rediscovered by Sir Robert Plunder who was subsequently killed by a tribe of Man-Apes, but whose son Kevin, aka Ka-Zar, survived to fight another day and eventually team up with Spiderman and the X-Men.

Latveria

Latveria: This is a country landlocked between the real-world nations of Romania, Serbia and Hungary. Latveria has a population of some 500,000 fearfully ruled by the eminently villainous Victor von Doom, aka Doctor Doom, who maintains order with an army of Doomsbots. Obviously having an absolute monarchy with (at best) questionable morals is cause for concern in Marvel Universe, which is why Latveria has been a frequent backdrop in Spiderman and the Fantastic Four, the latter of whom was responsible for at least temporarily ousting Doctor Doom from his seat of power.

The Batcave

The Batcave: Who hasn’t wanted to visit Batman’s lair? The rather orginally named Batcave, hidden beneath Wayne Manor in a series of caves, is home to all manner of unimaginably cool gadgets and pectoral-enhancing suits. And of course, what self-respecting Batcave wouldn’t be stocked without the infamous Batmobile or Batwing? Being the good upstanding citizen that he is, Batman has taken steps to reduce his carbon footprint by installing a hydro-electric generator running off a nearby underground river. The Batcave also benefitted from a technological retrofit after an earthquake struck Gothan City creating new levels, which have been kitted out with a laboratory and a clustered mainframe consisting of no less than seven Cray T932 computers.

Themyscira

Themyscira: For all you Wonder Woman fans out there, this is for you. Themyscira was located somewhere in the Aegean Sea, near Greece and Turkey, but was later destroyed and the civilisation moved across the Atlantic to set up a new city in the Bermuda Triangle. It is populated by a race of humans called the Amazons, who are the reincarnated souls of women killed by men in pre-history and are ruled by the sisters Antiope and Hippolyta, who begat Diana, aka Wonder Woman, who became the Amazons’ ambassador to the outside world. A complex past indeed.

Dinosaur Island

Dinosaur Island: This is a fictional island in DC Universe situated in the Southern Pacific Ocean that theoretically exists in a state of temporal flux. After a number of US Navy submarines were mysteriously lost in the area during World War II, a crack team of marines were sent in to investigate. They found an island, as the name suggests, populated by dinosaurs who had been suspended in time and then released as the result of a series of powerful earthquakes. Outside the DC Universe timeline, Dinosaur Island is in fact a sentient being called the Center, who in response to the perceived threat to its existence from a nuclear-capable humanity, determines to destroy all of mankind.

Tontecarlo

Tontecarlo: This is a fictional gambling town found in the cult Spanish language Superman parody, Superlopez. Unless you have been confined to a cave all your life you couldn’t fail to miss the similarities with Monte Carlo, the infamously exhuberant gambling mecca of the Mediterranean. Who knew that superheroes gambled too?

Palombia

Palombia: This is a small, fictional South American country which is featured in several Belgian comic books and bordered by the Orinco River, the Andes Mountains and the Amazon Rainforest, placing it somewhere in real-world Venezuela. The name Palombia is actually a mash of Paraguay and Colombia. Here we can see TinTin, one of the most racially, politically and socially divisive comic book characters ever created, escaping from the clutches of an erupting volcano in Palombia with what looks like a gormless monkey following behind.