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
The Formatter
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
My goal originally was to set up a MCU-style character hub for marvel comics. Each character would be in a certain category and the comic character pages would be links to where each character was located.
The main thing was trying to fit everything together was a challenge.
Edited by GateStarX on Jan 24th 2023 at 4:55:56 AM
It's gonna be fun on the bun!
The Formatter
I don't see why Word of God and solicits aren't acceptable, as while things get updated or changed later, a pre-release with all that info serves as a good hub of information that doesn't have to be found elsewhere.
The Formatter
On my own unrelated note, I'm thinking that the Ant-Man and The Wasp page images should be updated. I'm thinking this/Gallery?file=Unstoppable_Wasp_Vol_2_2_Vecchio_Variant_Textless.jpg#Cover_Art_3){kind=small}
for the Wasp and a textless version of this
◊ for Ant-Man. I can't find any better ones and I'd like to have all of the Ant-Men represented and the same for both Wasps.
I'd also like to update Janet's character folder with this?file=Wasp_Vol_1_1_Nie_Variant_Textless.jpg#Trivia){kind=small}
and get a better version of this?file=Unstoppable_Wasp_Vol_1_1_Torque_Variant_Textless.jpg){kind=small}
◊ for Nadia's character folder. I'd at least like the image names to be updated with the actual source comics for reference. What do everyone think?
he/him
Sounds good. Potholing to image source (and/or adding useful names) is recommended, it seems. I'm hopeful that the new Wasp series will give us some strong images.
On a related note - I've created ComicBook Duplicate Images for those cases where we can't go to Image Pickin' until we have a new suggestion.
Any thoughts on options? Or other pages to list there?
Subpages for ComicBook.The Avengers are largely empty except for links to other pages hidden under info-boxes, which make it frustrating to find the folders that list tropes. The ratio of actual character sheets to empty folders are (respectively) have 1:8, 0:9, 3:15, 2:11, 4:11, 8:40, and 1:2. I made a sandbox showcasing what it would look like if we consolidated the 19 character sheets onto the main page and moved the redirects to other pages to two folders rather than 101 separate ones spread across seven. Any feedback?
I intend to fix zero-context examples and indentation problems once the move is made so my edits aren't hidden in the move.
The Formatter
It sounds like a good plan. I just don’t like the idea of indexes and character folders sharing the same page.
Also once upon a time I was working on the same concept. See Avengers Title Team for my variation on it. See if you can use it.
It's gonna be fun on the bun!
Oh, didn't realize someone was already working on this. I'll incorporate some of that into the sandbox. As per index, I guess it's just a matter of taste.
he/him
Any thoughts on how best to list arcs/events with their own pages on a work-specific page for the title(s) they're part of?
I've just added some to Immortal X-Men under an [AC: subheading, but I know the approach varies a lot across pages. Not sure two events justify a folder, for example.
Edited by Mrph1 on Jan 27th 2023 at 8:32:15 PM
The Formatter
I'd look at The Amazing Spider-Man (Nick Spencer) for an idea of how to do it. Although it depends on how long Immortal X-Men is going to run for.
I like using folders for symmetry and tidiness, but if theres only two events then I don't think it really needs it atm. Maybe a mention at the bottom would suffice for now? Unless you already did it in which case I advocate for folders.
It's gonna be fun on the bun!
he/him
Following on from discussion somewhere (?), I've added a couple of suggestions to the Marvel Comics Series discussion page -
- One to suggest that listing unreleased works there is fine, but we shouldn't add redlinks. That way we don't end up duplicating Future Works and we remove the risk of a comic being published but nobody creating a page.
- One to cover the suggestion that arcs/events with no series of their own shouldn't be listed in a 'series' list - they can stay on other index pages, and will be accessible via the works page for their series. Interested to hear wider views on this one - but it's a suggestion I broadly agree with (we might need an exception for any that don't have a works page for their parent series).
Thoughts?
he/him
I've made an initial attempt. I agree that it might be a case of using folders beyond a certain point, but that seems overkill for two.
The Formatter
So the avengers change was made to the character page. The only thing I’m against is having the index on the same page as the character folders. Is there anyway we can move the folders to something like Avengers: Title Team?
It's gonna be fun on the bun!
Backlash
Hello,
I was wondering for Characters.The Avengers page that the Avengers on this page be separated by the decade that the debuted similar to GateStarX's Sandbox.Avengers Title Team sandbox.
he/him
I had a related ATT on this a while back, and I think I agree with some of the later responses.
Sorting by timeline makes a certain amount of sense as it aligns to arcs, but it also risks Fan Myopia for casual readers. I think I'm slightly in favour, but with a couple of caveats -
- Character pages sorted by intro date should probably have something in the page intro that clearly states how they're sorted. Because if you don't already know the work, it's not obvious.
- Where possible, individual characters should have their specific intro date/issue listed in their description, to reinforce that point.
Does that sound fair?
Given that the ATT thread's not locked and was also about Marvel character pages (i.e. this is still on-topic), it might be worth a comment there if you want to kick it back to life to seek a broader range of views?
Edited by Mrph1 on Feb 25th 2023 at 5:24:21 PM
Backlash
~ Mrph1
I think those suggestions will work. Just in case I decide to visit the ATT page as requested and get other takes on this matter.
he/him
Lots of new titles out last week - I've made a start on two pages, but don't think anyone's looking at the others.
- Cosmic Ghost Rider (2023)
- Hallows' Eve
- I am Iron Man
- Rogue & Gambit (2023)
- Spider-Gwen: Shadow Clones
- Unforgiven (Marvel Comics)
I can't see any reason why they wouldn't justify their own works page if folk want to write them up. I'll probably get to them eventually if nobody else does.
he/him
he/him
And just created
Betsy Braddock: Captain Britain - I think there are a few other Jan and Feb launches that aren't covered yet.
he/him
Two more new this week:
he/him
Following on from the Characters page spoiler policy thread and a couple of posts on the Character Page Cleanup thread, I'm hoping to revise the standard 'unmarked spoiler' warning on at least some of the Marvel Characters pages so that they have a specific "spoilers before [X] will be unmarked", rather than the current vague "There are unmarked spoilers on these sheets for all but the most recent comics".
The thinking on this is:
- Some characters have no recent comics. If their last series was 2015 and they've not been seen since, we'd be showing all spoilers by default, when there's really no need to.
- "Recent" is unhelpfully vague and goes against Examples Are Not Recent. A casual reader won't know what is or isn't marked.
- ...and for similar reasons, it's not desirable to have exactly the same cut-off point for every page.
- For active sets of characters like X-Men, Avengers, Spider-Man and so on, the cut off probably will be 'recent' (and will regularly update) because they're constantly in publication.
- For groups like the Eternals and Inhumans it may be several years back (e.g. Judgment Day was the last Eternals story, so probably the start of that, May 2022 - but it might not change again for years if they don't reappear in new comics).
- For some pages - e.g. inactive ones like Marvel's Western heroes, or standalone settings like Strikeforce Morituri - we might leave all spoilers tagged.
Once a policy is defined for a particular page, it would be a Discussion page or forum conversation (E.g. here) to change it, not unilateral.
Does that all sound reasonable?
Edited by Mrph1 on Mar 17th 2023 at 7:38:47 PM
he/him
As a starting point and pilot for all that, ClanDestine:
Ongoing series in 1994, miniseries in 1996. Then a miniseries in 2008 and an annual crossover event (with a big reveal about a character who’s been offstage since the very beginning) in 2012.
No guest appearances or other stuff since, as far as I know, despite their MCU appearance.
So the proposal is: keep the 2008 series and the crossover tagged, remove tagging from the first two series.
I'll give it a few days for people to respond here or on the discussion page post (which also points here), then make the change if I don't hear back.
he/him
Relevant sandboxes:
- Marvel Characters Pages: Spoiler Limits - Progress on the Character page spoiler tagging cleanup
- ComicBook Duplicate Images - Images used on multiple works pages
(she/her)
^ There was a request to pin this post but only the OP can be pinned so I added the sandboxes to the OP and pinned it.
Macron's notes
he/him
Released this week:
On a different note, as mentioned on Unreleased Work Clean-Up
, it's now been made very clear that pre-release pages for comics must be based on something representative of the work - i.e. covers and preview page art/dialogue.
Not Word of God creator interviews (we can cite them alongside preview art, but they can't be sole source) or marketing/promo blurb.