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resolved AuthorAppeal - reusing characters? Print Comic
I'm seeing a few examples where tropers have added the Author Appeal trope because writers have reused familiar / favourite characters in shared-universe comics. For example, from the new ComicBook.Defenders Beyond works page:
- Author Appeal: The new Defenders roster is comprised almost entirely of characters Ewing's either created (Taaia) or written before, from Mighty Avengers and The Ultimates to Loki: Agent of Asgard.
As per the trope page, Author Appeal is "a particular gimmick or kink is so widespread and prominent that it is interpreted as a specific reason the creator actually produced the work".
I can see how that might be applied to an attribute of the characters - although that seems to veer closer to Creator Thumbprint unless it goes into kink territory.
But simply reusing existing characters, whether or not the writer created them, doesn't feel like it fits.
I'd originally asked the same question on the discussion page for the trope itself, but didn't get an answer - flagging it here just to ensure I'm not misunderstanding before I delete someone's work (I don't see a more appropriate trope to move it to?).
Thanks!
Edited by Mrph1resolved Character pages - navbox 'index' links and crossreferencing? Print Comic
Are there any guidelines for start of page navbox 'indexing' (the cross-referencing wikilink kind, rather than [[index]] tagging) on Character pages, for the cases where a work or franchise has a huge number of characters across a large number of sub-pages?
Looking at Characters.X Men Arakko (and the other X-Men Characters pages), I count 19 lines of links in the navbox before the page itself starts, mapping out approximately 50 different X-Men character pages. Presumably that also needs to be updated on all 50(ish) of the character pages any time it changes.
That's not an exhaustive list either, as it doesn't directly link to some of the single-character pages or the works-specific pages for particular comic books.
Most of these characters range across the wider franchise, appearing in multiple Marvel Universe comics and webcomics, so are not specific to any one comic series and their Characters page names don't mirror a particular works page.
(It's also using WMG tagging, which I’m not used to seeing outside of WMG pages, but I’m assuming that's not a problem?)
Looking at other sprawling franchises -
- Characters.Star Wars takes a different approach, with a single link back to the top-level page - e.g. as seen on Characters.Star Wars High Republic Era Jedi.
- Characters.Star Trek uses a much shorter list of links on subpages, mapping back to the relevant series (e.g. on Characters.Star Trek Deep Space Nine Federation And Bajor)- but its characters tend to be series-specific so it doesn't have quite the same structural challenge.
Is this approach fine 'as is', should it be condensed/removed in a similar way to Star Trek & Star Wars, or can it be streamlined in a different way (e.g. hide it in a folder to save space)?
Thanks!
EDIT: Edited to fix terminology and make navbox references clearer.
Edited by Mrph1resolved Misuse of Deal With The Devil? Print Comic
I moved a Excellent Judge of Character entry from Recap.Sonic The Hedgehog IDW Phantom Riders Arc to Characters.Sonic The Hedgehog IDW The Restoration, re-writing and removed the pothole, as I thought it was misuse and believed the trope entry itself was better for the character page.
However, this recent edit
potholed Deal with the Devil for this entry under Excellent Judge of Character.
- Excellent Judge of Character: Zig-zagged. Due to none of the Restoration's members having talked with her about the danger that Clutch and his company possesses, she accepts a deal with him, seemingly unaware about how Clean Sweep plans on usurping the organization as the sole proprietor of cleaning up after Eggman. However, after Jewel makes it look like she was fooled by Mimic's excuse as to why Amy hasn't reached out to her, she gives a serious glare to Duo after talking with him in Issue #70, where she's starting to suspect the so-called "helpful" cat.
I believe it's misuse since the character himself isn't a devil, just a shady businessman, and the character, Clutch, has no analogues or parallels to a devil or satan.
The troper also put their edit reason as "Trope was cut/disambiguated due to cleanup" which isn't correct either.
At the risk of starting an edit war, is it reasonable to remove the pothole because it's misuse?
Edited by taotruthsresolved Unsure of edit to Symbiotes page Print Comic
An editor made an addition to the Characters/MarvelComicsSymbiotes page that's got me scratching my head—stating that when the symbiotes were first introduced "it was said only very specific people can ever bond with [them], much less form an actual partnership with them".
I consider myself a big Venom fan, but the only time I remember that being a thing is in the Venom movies.
The closest I can remember to seeing something along the lines of that statement in the comics is a narration/thought box in 1996's Venom: The Hunger where Eddie Brock muses that symbiotes didn't evolve to be bonded to humans, and that whatever host they did evolve to naturally bond to would have supplied them with the phenethylamine levels they need to survive... but that was retconned a long time ago—even before Donny Cates introduced Knull.
I was equally curious and confused, so I did some digging to see if I could find anything, but all I've come up with are several instances where that's is shown not to be the case—even early on:
- In 1984's Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man #99, the symbiote that became Venom bonded to a man named Leonard Elkhart to get back to Peter Parker.
- In 1991's Fantastic Four (Vol. 1) #359-360, Dreadface bonds to a random gorilla before taking over the Thing and jumping to the Human Torch, and was where symbiotes were first established as being part of a marauding interstellar empire and prefering strong hosts suitable for facilitating planetary conquests.
- In 1993's Fantastic Four Annual #26, Dreadface takes over a woman named Carrie Burke and consumes her from the inside-out—marking the first time symbiotes are shown doing so to their hosts.
- In 1994's Venom: Seperation Anxiety (Vol. 1) the Venom symbiote bonds to Doctor Zwerling and an unnamed trucker to get back to Eddie Brock.
- In 1995's Venom: Sinner Takes All the Venom symbiote bonds to Anne Weying to save her life, later rebonding to her to save Eddie.
- In the 1995 Planet of the Symbiotes event, it's established that symbiotes are capable of bonding to any host they please, but have a modus operandi of draining their vitality / adrenaline / phenylethanolamine until they die and/or just straight-up consuming them from the inside-out before jumping to a new one—something later seen with the Venom symbiote in 2003's The Spectacular Spider-Man (Vol. 2) and the Mania symbiote in 2003's Venom (Vol. 1).
- In 1996's Venom: The Hunted, two symbiotes that survived the aftermath of the invasion were shown having bonded to otherwise ordinary civilians named George Strickland and Zeena Hodges.
- In 1996's The Amazing Spider-Man (Vol. 1) #410, the Carnage symbiote leaves Cletus Kasady to take over John Jameson without issue before jumping to Ben Reilly.
Am I missing something? I will admit it's possible—I haven't read every single Venom-related comic (yet) and it's been a long time since I've read some of them. But if this ever was said to be a thing in the comics, it both contradicts the earlier lore (what little there was, at least) and is completely ignored by the later lore—which wouldn't be the first time something like this has happened at Marvel.
Edited by Arawn999

Laconic.The Joker is a laconic for SelfDemonstrating.The Joker. Is this allowed?