A thread offering assistance and support for tropers covering Marvel's many, many stories and characters.
This includes the shared Marvel Universe, but not the cultural Disney juggernaut known as the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). One of our aims is to disentangle tropes and characters from the MCU adaptations from pages about their source material.
This scope does cover Marvel comic, manga and webcomic stories, characters and tropes that are unconnected to that shared Marvel Universe - e.g. their licensed Star Wars, Alien and Predator stories.
As of September 2021, there were about 27,000 Marvel comics published across 4,900 or so different series. They started publishing in the 1940s as Timely Comics, then became Atlas Comics and - eventually - Marvel. As a consequence, Marvel have a lot of Comic Book and Characters pages on the site (and have recently started publishing Webcomics as well).
The sheer scale of this means that there's so much material (with dozens of new comics added each week) that no one troper is likely to own or read all of it - especially as there are big gaps in what's available digitally or reprinted (and licensed characters and legal issues mean that certain stories may never be reprinted at all).
And that can make troping their shared universe pretty tricky - even Marvel's own creative teams have been known to lose track now and then.
We've got tropers busily revising existing pages, while others add new information weekly as new comics are published. This thread's here to help with any queries that generates, to focus work on particular pages that could use improvement, and to help ensure that we tackle works page names and other aspects in a consistent way that makes sense to readers navigating between different Marvel-related pages (as well as following best practice for the wiki as a whole).
Feel free to post here to draw attention to relevant posts or threads elsewhere - e.g. if examples, images, captions and quotes, or spoiler policies for these pages are under discussion.
There are existing threads and standard guidelines for those topics (e.g. Image Pickin' has its own, very structured, process), and this shouldn't duplicate any of that - but tropers reading this thread may wish to vote or comment once they know about those discussions.
- If there's a consistent creative team, they should be named in the introduction. Ideally, include inkers and colorists as well as other artists.
- The page image doesn't always have to be the first issue cover.
- Pages for arcs, runs and events should include the relevant titles and issue numbers.
- Pages should include start and end dates in the introduction
- Links regarding particular characters (e.g. Wolverine) should go to their Characters page, not their ComicBook page.
- As a rule, characters in Marvel Universe continuity only get one Character page profile, regardless of how many different series they appear in. However:
- Alternate Universe and Bad Future variants may justify their own profile, and sometimes the same can be said for Split Personality scenarios.
- It may be appropriate to add a character to a relevant Character page with an intro and a link to their full profile on another page (e.g. many villains have been major characters in several different series)
- Creation of any new Character Specific Pages, and proposals to merge any of them back into other pages, should go via the Character Specific Pages cleanup thread
, but it's worth posting here as well.
- If you're splitting, merging or moving characters between different Character pages, it's worth checking with the Character Page Cleanup thread as well as posting here.
Relevant sandboxes
- Marvel Comics Sandboxes - list of relevant sandbox pages for launches, splits and mergers.
- Marvel Characters Pages: Spoiler Limits - Progress on the Character page spoiler tagging cleanup
- ComicBook Duplicate Images - Images used on multiple works pages
Edited by Mrph1 on Sep 1st 2023 at 12:48:21 PM
he/him
General wiki policy is to have one Characters page entry per person per continuity. Others can signpost to it (work-specific intro, image and link), but shouldn't duplicate the trope list.
Of course that gets complicated by Bad Future versions, personality changes, different characters who are actually the same character, retcons and all the other fun stuff comics does.
But that's the ideal, anyway.
If like to start a project to fix the dc sidr
The Formatter
Hey just letting everyone know I launched a thread for the DC side of things here, so that if anyone's interested they can start doing stuff there.
The Formatter
So I just found Sandbox.Characters Ultimate Universe 2023, which has a lot of formatting done on characters if someone wants to add them into Characters.Ultimate Universe 2023.
It's gonna be fun on the bun!
Should the clones of Cletus Kasady be moved from Marvel Comics: Carnage to Marvel Comics: Cletus Kasady?
The Formatter
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
That I do not know. Probably Cletus Kasady tbh.
The Formatter
Ok I updated Characters.Ultimate Universe 2023 based on the sandbox. Now it's got alot of characters that need love, but they do all have tropes atleast. I also launched sandboxes for Sandbox.Ultimate Black Panther and Sandbox.Ultimate X Men 2024.
It's gonna be fun on the bun!
he/him
Just took a longer look at CreatorsPet.Marvel Universe after it turned up in my watchlist after a link fix, and I think we've got a lot of cleanup needed there.
- Hated by fans (The Scrappy)
- Loved (or worshipped) by the writers (Creator's Favorite)
- Put into big scenes for no reason (Character Focus)
- Talked up by the other characters (Character Shilling)
Unless it meets all of these criteria, it doesn't fit.
...but looking at the page, it's mostly Creator's Favorite, and very few of the characters are really The Scrappy.
Thanos? Kitty Pryde? X-23/Laura? I'm not convinced...
Edited by Mrph1 on Jan 19th 2024 at 11:00:43 AM
Yeah, I wouldn't say any of those characters count.
Agreed. Very few, if any characters on that page probably count. Others I think might be misuse too:
- The Inhumans (Can this trope even apply to an entire group instead of individual characters?)
- Dan Slott's Doctor Octopus (There is a reason he is put into big scenes: He is literally the main character).
- All of Grant Morrison's X-Men characters - The Cuckoos, Beak, Angel, Quentin Quire (Not talked up by other characters. All of them are very unpopular in-universe).
he/him
Creator's Pet says they must be The Scrappy and The Scrappy is very clear that it must be an individual character, so I think the Inhumans are out...
The Formatter
So I'm working on the following atm and it would help alot if someone could double-check if everythings good.
Longshot needs alot of work but the bare bones are done enough for the page to launch. If anyone's actually read it that would help alot. It's gonna be fun on the bun!
I’ll wait on it but if the Beast Clone from X-Force sticks around and replaces the original should we create another folder on his page?
he/him
It's the Laura Kinney / Teen Cable situation, isn't it?
Depends how many character tropes are relevant to the split, I guess. But seems likely. Worth waiting 'til the series ends, though.
Also, can I add X-Men: Sinister to the X-men Navbox? It’s one link so it won’t have a huge impact on it’s overall size
Edited by Furygildeman on Jan 26th 2024 at 10:28:34 AM
The Formatter
I think the Sinister page counts more as a character specific page than a sub-page, so I wouldn’t.
In fact maybe we should rename the page to Marvel Comics Sinister or Marvel Comics Mister Sinister or Marvel Comics Nathaniel Essex
Edited by GateStarX on Jan 28th 2024 at 2:07:19 AM
It's gonna be fun on the bun!
he/him
Generally in favour of a rename, but might be worth waiting until the Krakoa/Enigma saga ends, just in case?
I would vote just Essex or Essex Clones just so it encapsulate as many folders as possible
The Formatter
So I'm trying to cut down the X-Men pages right now. I've got a sandbox for merging all the main members pages here, but it's too long. I've got Marvel Comics: Colossus and Marvel Comics: Rachel Summers ready to launch but they'd leave their base pages to short. Even removing them from the page it's still too long, so I have no ideas how to solve it. Does anybody got any ideas?
It's gonna be fun on the bun!
How long are the Rachel and Colossus sandboxes
I really disagree with just merging all those pages. If a it comes between too short and too long, a vote go with to short. Long pages are just such a pain to edit.
The Formatter
Both are currently over 40K on the sandboxes. I'd just launch them both, but the rule is the remaining page has to still be 40K and I don't want anyone getting pissed off.
It's gonna be fun on the bun!
I mean I’d say for now just don’t merge those pages and keep the individual folders on those pages for now
If we’re cutting unnecessary pages, I’d say X-Terminators is a good one. It really has only one folder. The rest are links
Yeah I don't even want to think about the DC side of things. That entire cleanup is going to be fun.
It's gonna be fun on the bun!