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
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
That's an interesting one. It's a 1965-1966 arc (or possibly more of an era) in The Avengers (1963) - which doesn't have a series-specific work page of its own right now.
As far as I can tell, it's never been collected under that name, and apparently the name wasn't even used in-universe until a decade later in issue #151 (1976), in a news report looking back on the team history. I've seen comments that it got some All in the Manual use during the original run, on letters pages, but that's all second-hand - and they aren't included in any reprints.
The collected edition with the first half of the era is Avengers: The Old Order Changeth, but that's not an exact match to the page scope.
It's actually the mid-section of Stan Lee's run as writer - #1-34, so I can't help wondering if splitting by creative team, not cast, is a good long-term solution.
(And the current work page doesn't actually say which issues it's covering in its scope, which is a pet hate of mine. We have a start, but no ending)
So -
- The Avengers: Cap's Kooky Quartet if we embrace that retrospective name, which does get some in- and out-of-universe usage from Marvel.
- The Avengers: The Old Order Changeth if we use the official collection name, with the caveat that the scope doesn't quite match the work page.
- The Avengers (Stan Lee) if we decide to put all of Stan's run in one works page, maybe?
I think I'd be comfortable with The Avengers: Cap's Kooky Quartet as the least worst option, with the caveat that the introduction should be clear that this has only been used retrospectively and inconsistently by Marvel.
Edited by Mrph1 on May 10th 2023 at 4:44:36 PM
The Formatter
How many tropes are there? We could move it to The Avengers (Lee & Kirby) and format the page like Fantastic Four (1961).
It's gonna be fun on the bun!
The Put on the Bus entry on that page links directly to Kooky Quartet so that seems like a fine place to put the page’s contents.
he/him
Works for me. The only issue is that Kirby left the book early on, before most of these issues - but we can make that clear in the intro if we don't want to rename the page.
I'll put some discussion posts up to warn tropers of the prospective merge. Perhaps give it a week or so for feedback?
he/him
For anyone who's not seen it, there's an ATT on yesterday's big Spider-Man content leak and Marvel's reaction.
I think it's mostly resolved now, but views on the remaining work page cleanup are very welcome. ATT is spoiler tagged, but some links may lead to spoilers.
Edited by Mrph1 on May 17th 2023 at 5:17:00 PM
Okay, we need to re-open the question about X-Cellent and The X-Cellent (2023), because Mrph 1 has been deleting tropes that I added to the former page in order to take them over to expand the latter page, despite insisting that we should "hold fire" on deciding whether to merge or separate the two pages until the trade paperback is announced. Surely, if there has been no decision, then I am still allowed to expand and update X-Cellent, correct?
By now, it should be clear to all except the most dense of us that sheep are secretly conspiring to kill us all and steal our pants.
he/him
Sure, but until and unless there's a consensus to merge, examples specific to the 2022 series go on that page, and examples for the 2023 series go on its own page, don't they?
The three examples I moved over were purely for events in the 2023 series - two relating to a character death in that series, one for a character (Dox) who wasn't in the 2022 series at all.
(Edit reason: "Moving tropes from the 2023 Sequel Series to that page")
Putting them on a page that doesn't describe any of the other 2023 series events (and where tropers wouldn't expect 2023 series spoilers) didn't seem right to me.
I continue to contend that the 2023 series is nothing more than a relaunch of X-Cellent, no different from when Marvel relaunched Ms. Marvel after Secret Wars, and thus X-Cellent should be updated on that assumption until consensus finally and definitively decides that the two pages should remain split. If there is a chance of an eventual merger, it would seem prudent to keep updating X-Cellent in order to make the merger proceed faster.
he/him
Given this thread's so quiet, I've raised a new ATT to get a steer on how we should proceed while we're waiting for a merge decision.
Goku Black
Also I was planning to make a page for the 1986 event life in the mad dog ward?
It ran in three different spiderman titles though. So how would you guys suggest making it and linking it?
"That's right mortal. By channeling my divine rage into power, I have forged a new instrument in which to destroy you."
he/him
Things like Kraven's Last Hunt and the various X-book crossovers give us some precedents for that. Not many hard rules, but my view would be:
- We treat it as a discrete work in its own right, as we do for those others - so it gets a ComicBook page. There are questions about whether we move away from that approach in the long term, but that's what we do now, so...
- I'd suggest ComicBook.Spider Man Life In The Mad Dog Ward (Custom WikiWord: Spider-Man: Life in the Mad Dog Ward) for page name. Not all crossovers have the character/franchise/series name as a prefix, and it's not essential, but the steer was that it's a good thing to do, if we can.
- Pick one of the issue or tpb covers for an initial page image. I quite like the Amazing part 2 cover, especially at wiki size, but that's just me.
- Add it to indexes for Marvel Comics Events and Creator.Ann Nocenti, plus any list of arcs on Franchise.Spider Man and/or ComicBook.Spider Man
...and probably worth noting that it was immediately after Kraven's Last Hunt and used the same cross-title approach, which was new to Spider-Man at that point (and technically makes it a Bat Family Crossover, I suspect).
Spider-Man is one of those comics that doesn't have separate work pages for the original 20th century Long Runner series, so probably easiest to just link to ComicBook.Spider Man (I'm creating a few of them now I've noticed that, as least as redirects - it helps us stay more specific on things like image sources - but we can sort any links to them out later).
And the usual Fan Myopia caveat applies - we should write it so that it still makes sense for someone who's barely/never heard of Spider-Man before. Put a bit of context in the intro and link to Peter Parker's character page, maybe.
Does that give you a starting point?
Edited by Mrph1 on Jun 11th 2023 at 8:30:10 PM
he/him
Pinned post updated with some character page guidance and signposting to other threads.
he/him
The image caption for Characters.Ultimate Spider Man Miles Morales is now under discussion here. Both the current and the previous caption were using quotes from the Sony Spider-Verse films, not from the comics - but this is a page for the comic version of Miles.
Edited by Mrph1 on Jul 9th 2023 at 4:53:59 PM
The Formatter
So I’ve recently gotten my edit privileges back, and while looking at the Venom index I noticed that Otto Octavius wasn’t listed under main hosts. I added him back under there but he was already removed once. Should he be listed under main hosts?
It's gonna be fun on the bun!
I'd personally put Otto under the Venom: Other Hosts page since he was only its host for a single arc.
The Formatter
I mean that’s fair, but at the moment his folder is on the main page. I think we could actually just make just a main Venom Hosts page. Most of the other hosts are links to other pages. We could consolidate them all under a hosts on other pages folder. Then do a Main Hosts, Secondary Hosts, and Minor Hosts section split. How does that sound? It mainly works cause the main 3 hosts have their own pages.
Edited by GateStarX on Jul 11th 2023 at 12:28:47 PM
It's gonna be fun on the bun!
I'm not opposed to the idea, but how would we differentiate between the Secondary and Minor hosts?
The Formatter
Secondary are multiple appearances or have had and arc, minor are like one or two comics.
It's gonna be fun on the bun!
he/him
The fact it's a bit subjective is a good argument for merging them, IMO. If anyone gets special treatment, perhaps only Peter and the hosts who've headlined a Venom series?
& In that case, it would either be divvied up as:
Secondary Hosts: Tel-Kar, She-Venom (Anne Weying), Venom (Angelo Fortunato), Superior Venom (Otto Octavius), Butcher of Thors (Malekith)
Minor Hosts: Everyone else who bonded to the symbiote
or
Secondary Hosts: Tel-Kar, She-Venom (Anne Weying), Venom (Angelo Fortunato), Superior Venom (Otto Octavius), Butcher of Thors (Malekith), etcetera
Edited by Arawn999 on Jul 11th 2023 at 7:01:13 AM
he/him
The Avengers-related event ComicBook.The Crossing's just come up on the disambiguation thread.
The Crossing (Marvel Comics) works for me, but would be good to get more views there.
The Formatter
I’m good with usIng the Marvel Comics subheading.
The main hosts section looks good but I’m not sure how to side on the secondary/minor split. If most of them link to other pages then I guess we should just do a other hosts section. That would only be like three or four folders. I’m still kind of leaning towards the secondary and minor hosts subheadings though.
Edited by GateStarX on Jul 11th 2023 at 12:59:52 PM
It's gonna be fun on the bun!
he/him
For awareness-
Over on the unreleased works thread, I've just posted about the page created for the upcoming JMS Captain America series.
Apart from anything else, it seems preemptive to put a Late Arrival Spoiler warning on it mentioning the recent Cap series and events when we don't know how much of a sequel it will actually be?
This seems to be a recurring issue with unreleased Marvel and DC series, especially since the clarification that we can't trope interviews and solicitations, only preview art and covers.
Edited by Mrph1 on Jul 12th 2023 at 10:30:32 AM
Given that the the series published under Marvel's Infinity Comics imprint include "Infinity Comics" as part of their official titles, should that not be included in the titles of the series here?
If anything the Main Hosts page would have the most redirects since Spider-Man, Deadpool, Eddie Brock, Mac Gargan, and Flash Thompson all have their own character pages.
Edited by Arawn999 on Jul 12th 2023 at 9:26:00 AM
Sounds good.
I was digging in my queries for something unrelated and found this old query
about whether or not Cap's Kooky Quartet is the best name for that page. Not ComicBook.Avengers By Author Or Year? It didn't get consensus so I thought I'd bring it here.