Howard Stark Howard Stark Howard Stark is an American fictional character appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. The character is usually depicted as a background character in stories featuring his son Tony Stark and also in stories featuring Captain America. He is the founder of Stark Industries. Throughout the character's publication history, Howard Stark has been featured in several incarnations of comic book series. He has also been adapted for several animated TV shows and films. Throughout the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the character has been portrayed by Dominic Cooper and John Slattery. The character was created by Archie Goodwin
Superhero fiction Gail Simone has coined the term "Women in Refrigerators" (named after an incident in "Green Lantern" #54 where Kyle Rayner's girlfriend Alex DeWitt is murdered by the supervillain Major Force and stuffed into Rayner's refrigerator) to refer to this practice. Many works of superhero fiction occur in a shared fictional universe, sometimes (as in the cases of the DC and Marvel Universes) establishing a fictional continuity of thousands of works spread over many decades. Changes to continuity are also common, ranging from small changes to established continuity, commonly called retcons, to full reboots, erasing all previous continuity. It is also