Comic book characters with real life inspirations

John Constantine
Sting
The magician/detective/conman was made to look like Sting because his creators were huge fans of his music. Although similar in looks and age, the comic book character does tend to smoke a few more cigarettes than the English star.

J. Jonah Jameson
Stan Lee
The similarities are uncanny between Jameson and the face of Marvel Comics. Jameson is always demanding photos of Spiderman, which Lee apparently would do all the time with his artists, along with being somewhat grumpy and irritable.

Magneto and Professor X
Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr.
First appearing around the height of the civil rights movement, it’s not surprising that the rivals were based off Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. Like them, Magneto and Professor X both worked to fight the oppression of their people, but in different ways.

Harley Quinn
Arlene Sorkin
When Paul Dini was thinking about a female to add to the Joker’s henchman characters, he recalled a scene from “Days of our Lives” where Sorkin played a court jester in a fantasy sequence. He got her involved and they developed the character together, which she even voiced.

The Joker
Conrad Veidt
Veidt was a German actor whose whole look inspired the appearance of the prince of crime, down to the look in his eyes. Furthermore, in 1928 he starred in “The Man Who Laughs,” playing a man whose face was disfigured into a permanently wide smile.

Iron Man
Howard Hughes
The American icon inspired the man inside of the suit, Tony Stark. Hughes’ charisma, “renaissance-man” essence and immense wealth are embodied by the character who is considered one of the top comic book characters of all time.

Lucifer Morningstar
David Bowie
In the late 1980’s, Neil Gaiman was aiming to redesign the modern interpretation of Satan for his comic “The Sandman.” He wanted Satan to draw people in, and thought of none other than David Bowie as a person who could do just that.

Tintin
Palle Huld
In 1928, 15 year-old Danish boy Palle Huld circumnavigated the globe in 46 days, in honor of the novel “Around the World in 80 Days” by Jules Verne. This caught the attention of cartoonist Hergé, who published the globe trotting character of Tintin the next year.

The Hellfire Club
Multiple members of the fictional society within the Marvel Comics universe that often battles the X-Men were based on actors that Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, the creators, were fond of:
Mastermind-Robert Price
Sebastian Shaw-Robert Shaw
Donald Pierce- Donald Sutherland
Harry Leland-Orson Wells
Emma Frost- Diana Rig

Darkseid
Adolf Hitler
The supreme ruler of the planet Apokolips was created by Jack Kirby, who modeled his face on actor Jack Pallance, but used the personality of Hitler as inspiration for the longtime Superman villain.