The Beijing Subway is a rapid transit rail network that serves the urban and suburban districts of Beijing municipality. The subway is owned by the city of Beijing and has two operators, the wholly state owned Beijing Mass Transit Railway Operation Corp., which operates 13 lines, and the Beijing MTR Corp., a public-private joint-venture with the Hong Kong MTR, which manages 2 lines.

The subway's first line opened in 1969, and the network now has 15 lines, 192 stations and 372 km (231 mi) of track in operation. It is the oldest subway in mainland China. Among the world's metro systems, the Beijing Subway ranks fourth in track length after the metros of Shanghai, London and Seoul, and fourth in annual ridership after those of Tokyo, Seoul, and Moscow.

In 2011, the Beijing Subway delivered over 2.18 billion rides, and on September 9, 2011, set a single-day record of 7.57 million. All but two of Beijing Subway's 15 lines were built within the past decade. The most recent additions, Line 9, along with sections of Lines 8, 15 and Fangshan, entered into operation on December 31, 2011. Despite the rapid expansion, the existing network cannot adequately meet the city's mass transit needs and extensive expansion plans call for 19 lines and over 703 km (437 mi) of track in operation by 2015 and 1,000 km (620 mi) by 2020. The network is set to reach 420 km (260 mi) by the end of 2012.

Beijing ( /beɪˈdʒɪŋ/; Chinese: 北京; pinyin: Běijīng, [peɪ˨˩ t͡ɕiŋ˥]), formerly romanized as Peking ( /piːˈkɪŋ/ or /peɪˈkɪŋ/), is the capital of the People's Republic of China and one of the most populous cities in the world, with a population of 19,612,368 as of 2010. The metropolis, located in northern China, is governed as a direct-controlled municipality under the national government, with 14 urban and suburban districts and two rural counties. Beijing Municipality is surrounded by Hebei Province with the exception of neighboring Tianjin Municipality to the southeast.

Beijing is China's second largest city by urban population after Shanghai and is the country's political, cultural, and educational center, and home to the headquarters for most of China's largest state-owned companies. Beijing is a major transportation hub in the national highway, expressway, railway and high-speed rail network. Beijing's Capital International Airport is the second busiest in the world by passenger traffic.

The Red Ghost (Ivan Kragoff) and his Super-Apes (Mikhlo, Igor and Peotr) are a group of Marvel Comics supervillains, who started their career fighting the Fantastic Four, before confronting other Marvel heroes like Iron Man and Spider-Man. The characters were created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby in Fantastic Four #13 (April, 1963) and #29 (August, 1964).

Ivan Kragoff was born in Leningrad, in what was at the time the Soviet Union. Before becoming the Red Ghost, Ivan was a Soviet scientist bent on beating the Americans to the moon and claiming it for the Communist empire. He assembled a crew of three trained primates — Mikhlo the Gorilla, Igor the Baboon, and Peotr the Orangutan — which he subjected to specialized training regimens of his own design, then took off on his lunar rocket trip on behalf of the USSR, while on the very next panel, the Fantastic Four were aiming their own rocket for the same destination.

Kragoff knew enough of the Fantastic Four's history, and he purposefully designed his rocket in such a way that he and his crew would be heavily exposed to the cosmic rays that would, he expected, give them superpowers. This was successful: Kragoff gained the ability to become as intangible and invisible as a "ghost", Mikhlo became super-strong and super-durable, Igor gained the ability to shapeshift and could transform into nearly anything, and Peotr gained the ability to control either gravity (like Graviton) or magnetism (like Magneto) (accounts vary by writer^{[citation needed]}). They landed on the Blue Area of the Moon.