Late-night stars have never been shy about their love of Marvel. Known comics super-fan Seth Meyers has interviewed plenty of MCU stars and comic book writers on Late Night; Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel, and Conan O’Brien have all paid tribute to The Avengers in their own unique ways; and Bill Maher was even in a deleted scene in Iron Man 3.
Plenty of Marvel stars have hosted Saturday Night Live, including Paul Rudd, Chris Hemsworth, Natalie Portman, Scarlett Johansson, Simu Liu, and the late Chadwick Boseman. Robert Downey Jr. was even briefly an SNL cast member. And lest we forget about Samuel L. Jackson’s infamous “What Up With That?” f-bomb in 2012 (no, he’s not actually banned from the show).
SNL has long mined the MCU for sketch comedy gold, having parodied everything from Hawkeye and co. to The Incredible Hulk to WandaVision. One of the most popular SNL sketches of all time is “Black Widow Trailer,” which sees Black Widow (Johansson) juggle an internship at Fashion Weekly magazine and a “complicated” relationship with her boyfriend Ultron; to date, the 2015 sketch has racked up more than 33 million views on YouTube.
Late night’s affection for the MCU isn’t one-sided, either; it’s a mutual love affair. Over the decades, Marvel comics have featured several memorable crossovers between superheroes and iconic late-night figures. Johnny Carson (at least, his comic book counterpart) interviewed The Avengers in the 1970 comic Avengers #77: Heroes For Hire, and 1984’s The Avengers #239 : Late Night of the Super-Stars saw The Avengers guest on Late Night with David Letterman. More recently, the West Coast Avengers appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live! in the 2018 issue West Coast Avengers #4.
“We wanted the new West Coast Avengers to be able to debut to the rest of the Marvel Universe in a big, bombastic way,” series editor Alanna Smith said of West Coast Avengers #4. “And what’s a better place for a team that’s courting the L.A. limelight to debut than Jimmy Kimmel Live!? (Or, at least, the Marvel U equivalent).”
Another notable comic book crossover is Marvel Team-Up #74: Live from New York, It’s Saturday Night!. Written by Chris Claremont, the 1978 comic sees Peter Parker/Spider-Man and his girlfriend Mary Jane Watson attend a Stan Lee-hosted episode of SNL that goes awry (Lorne Michaels even gets kidnapped!). To save the day, Spider-Man joins forces with original Not Ready for Primetime Players Gilda Radner, Dan Aykroyd, Chevy Chase, Garrett Morris, Jane Curtin, John Belushi, and Laraine Newman.
Where exactly did the idea for Live from New York, It’s Saturday Night! come from? Bob Hall, a comic book artist and former Marvel editor who did the penciling on the issue, tells LateNighter that it was actually John Belushi himself who planted the seed.
“He called up one day and said, ‘This is John Belushi, and I’m a big Marvel fan. Could I come up and visit the office?’” Hall recalled. “Jim Shooter was the editor then, and he said, ‘Fine,’ so everybody was excited. Belushi came up [to the Marvel office]—he knew what was going on [at Marvel] and all the issues and stuff and was just a real fan. As he left, he said, ‘You should do ‘Spider-Man meets the Not Ready for Primetime Players.’ The next day, Jim called Lorne Michaels and got an OK from them on it.”
From there, Hall took a field trip to SNL‘s home at 30 Rock and got to work. He explains that he was able to sit in on an SNL rehearsal, where he sketched everything from the show’s cast members to Studio 8H itself.
“I was the editor—I wasn’t going to let anybody draw it but me,” Hall says, laughing. “We were lucky enough to get [comic artist and colorist] Marie Severin to do the likenesses. She did a lot of caricatures for the early MAD Magazine. She also did the cover.”
By all accounts, Live from New York, It’s Saturday Night! was a success. Hall tells LateNighter that Belushi, whose film Animal House was premiering around the same time, even invited him and his Marvel colleagues to the movie’s opening night party, where they gifted him the cover.
Other late-night hosts have made cameos in Marvel comics on a smaller scale. For instance, the 2021 comic Marauders #21: You Are Cordially Invited to the Hellfire Gala—written by Gerry Duggan and penciled/inked by Matteo Lolli—features brief appearances by Kimmel, O’Brien, and Meyers.
“Each of the three hosts presented their own challenges, but I think Conan O’Brien was the easiest to sketch,” Lolli told LateNighter. “His features are naturally more exaggerated, almost cartoonish, which fits his comedic persona and made it easier to capture his likeness. Despite living in Italy, where we have different TV shows, all three hosts are so recognizable that I was already familiar with their looks, which made the process both challenging and enjoyable.”
While Lolli isn’t sure if Kimmel or O’Brien ever saw the issue, he says that Meyers sent him a direct message on Twitter/X to thank him. “[That] was an amazing moment,” he tells LateNighter. “[Meyers is] super cool, and it really made my day.”
Meyers knows a thing or two about comic books himself. He and his former SNL co-star Bill Hader co-wrote their own Marvel comic, Spider-Man: The Short Halloween, in 2009. In a New York Times interview, Hader revealed that the idea originally came about when the two of them attended a Marvel party in 2007; they then decided to work on it during the 2007-2008 Writers Guild Strike.
“We had nothing but time on our hands. We talked about how writing a comic would be an awesome thing to do. Then it just kind of happened,” Hader explained. “Seth and I kind of walked around his neighborhood and figured out the Spider-Man idea and wrote it.”
Meyers described the opportunity to co-write a comic as “just sort of dumb luck” on a 2016 episode of the ComiXology: Conversations podcast. “I managed to write one measly comic, but it was really exciting because we had wanted Kevin Maguire to do the art for it, and Marvel was cool with that. That remains a real career highlight for me.” (Maguire is best known for his work on titles like Justice League, Captain America, and X-Men.)
That wouldn’t be the last of Meyers’ involvement with Marvel. Fans of Disney+’s Hawkeye can thank the Late Night host for helping to shape the limited series, which takes a lot of inspiration from Matt Fraction’s comics version.
“I brought up Hawkeye with Seth and that I was kind of talking to [Marvel Studios] about it,” Hawkeye director Rhys Thomas said in a 2021 interview with Uproxx. “And he was like, ‘Oh, I know Matt!’ And the next thing I know I’m emailing with Matt.”
The Strike Force Five may not have superpowers like The Avengers (at least, as far as we know)—but they have a special place in the MCU.
