Talk:List of Marvel Comics characters

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Contents

[edit] Additions

I took out Micronauts from the paragraph, since Micronauts are part of the Marvel Universe. I have a Micronauts comic where the X-men guest-star and the Microverse was a bigger factor of Marvel.

[edit] Guidelines

  • Disambiguation. If the character's name clearly could only mean a comics book character, then the entry should simply be the name: Spider-Man. If, on the other hand, the character's name could possibly be confused, then add the disambiguation phrase "(comics)" to the end of the entry; for example, the entry for Wolverine should be Wolverine (comics). For justification for this disambiguation phrase, see the section on disambiguation below.
    • Multiple Characters With the Same Name and Same Publisher. If the characters are related (example: Thunderbird (comics)), continue to use the disambiguation phrase "(comics)"; descriptions of each of the characters goes on the same page.
    • Multiple Characters With the Same Name but Different Publishers. If the character of one publisher is very prominent and the characters from the other publishers are obscure, then it is acceptable to continue using the disambiguation phrase "(comics)" and to place all the characters on the same page (example: Changeling (comics)). However, if several characters from different publishers are important, the characters should be split up into different pages using disambiguation phrases of the form "(Marvel Comics)", "(DC Comics)", etc. The page with the disambiguation phrase "(comics)" should be made a disambiguation phrase that simply points to the publisher-specific character pages.
  • Abbreviations. Abbreviations are not used. Thus, "Mister Fantastic", not "Mr. Fantastic", and "Doctor Octopus", not "Dr. Octopus". This is for the purpose of standardizing article names.
  • Codenames. Characters should be listed by codename, not by first and last name, except when the character is more well-known by first and last name than by any codename (examples: Jean Grey, Nick Fury). Thus, we should use Captain America and not "Steve Rogers" as the title of the article for the character.
  • Last Name, First Name.
    • If a character is usually known by a combination of first name and last name, then the character will be listed by first name (which puts it in accordance with the general Wikipedia convention of listing people by first name). For example, the primary link to Graydon Creed will be listed under "G", not "C". However, there should also be a link under "C", of the following form:
    • Prominent public personalities. Characters with extremely well-known public personas (examples: Matt Murdock as superstar lawyer, Peter Parker as high school nerd and Daily Bugle photographer, Reed Richards as scientific genius, Tony Stark as billionaire industrialist) are also listed by their first and last names. For example:
    • Same first letter of first and last name. If a character's first and last name start with the same letter, there is no need to make double entries based on first-name-first and last-name-first, since the entries would be close to one another anyway.
    • For the reasoning behind links of this form, besides the precedent of list of countries, see Talk:List of Marvel Comics characters/Archive 2.
  • Articles. Articles (like the word "The" in "The Beast") are not included in character names. However, redirects are fine; for example, The Beast could redirect to Beast (comics). The justification for not using articles is:
    • Other characters usually do not refer to the character with the article (a character talking to Beast does not say, "Watch out for that villain behind you, The Beast!", but rather simply says, "Watch out for that villain behind you, Beast!")
    • Marvel itself, in its published trading cards in the early 1990s, left off articles like "The" on the names of the character cards.
    • Over the years, comics companies have had a tendency to move away from articles. In the 1960s, using the word "The" was very popular with both Marvel and DC, but gradually, most characters who had the word "The" have dropped it.
    • Potentially confusing to users and editors of Wikipedia who are looking for a character and leave off the article.
    • Follows the precedents set by the article titles in such websites as (1) www.chronologyproject.com (2) www.marveldirectory.com/indivuals.htm (3) www.marvunapp.com/Appendix/appchar.htm, as well as the precedent set by the article titles in the Marvel Encyclopedia, published 2002 by Marvel Comics

[edit] Disambiguation

List of possible disambiguation phrases:

The "(superhero)" or "(supervillain)" disambiguation phrase has several problems:

  • It is often not quite clear whether a character is a hero or a villain. Though usually considered a hero, the Punisher could be considered a villain (Bloodaxe follows the same methods, and is usually considered a villain). Similar cases of ambiguity of moral affiliation could be made for Deadpool, Elektra, Thanos, and many other characters. There are also characters without any moral affiliation at all (example: Living Tribunal).
  • It seems to limit characters to just the superhero genre, which is not the only genre of characters. Should we consider certain characters who have no special powers (e.g. supporting characters like Uncle Ben) to be heroes? What about characters with no superpowers, but just military training, like Nick Fury?
  • Another problem with the "(superhero)" or "(supervillain)" designation is that it is not necessarily gender-neutral. For example, for Storm, should she be Storm (superhero) or Storm (superheroine)? And for Lilith, should she be Lilith (supervillain) or Lilith (supervillainess)?
  • In an effort to standardize the disambiguation name, some Wikipedia users were using the phrase "(superhero)" even for characters that were clearly supervillains. This made the entries confusing.

The advantage of a disambiguation phrase including the word "Marvel" is that it makes it clear what character is being referred to in those cases where multiple comic book characters from different publishers share the same codename (example: Captain Marvel is used by both Marvel Comics and DC Comics). However, any disambiguation phrase including the word "Marvel" also has several problems:

  • Just using "(Marvel)" by itself as a disambiguation phrase is not acceptable, as it is too vague and could mean too many things. Thus, it is necessary that it be used in combination with others words, like "(Marvel Comics)", "(Marvel character)", etc. This makes the disambiguation phrase long and hard-to-remember.
  • Many non-comics fans won't know what Marvel is.
  • Marvel is currently popular in the mainstream; will it continue to be so years in the future?
  • What if Marvel Comics were bought by another company, as Wildstorm was bought by DC Comics?

The disambiguation phrase "(comics)" does not have the drawbacks mentioned above, and furthermore has several advantages:

  • It immediately makes the genre clear.
  • It is only a single word, and very simple, in comparison to a complicated, difficult-to-remember disambiguation phrase like "(Marvel Comics character)".
  • This is a disambiguation phrase that could be applied to teams like Generation X (comics) and alien races like Asgardians (comics) as well.

[edit] Topics currently under discussion

These should be merged to either The Sandman or The Sandman (comics). Especially in the wake of the Neil Gaiman series, using the definite article here is absolutely the right thing to do, since it's in the title of the comic, just as we have The Avengers (comics).
I also still feel that many individual characters should have the definite article in their page titles, and even more so that we should not be editing text of other pages to remove definite articles from sentences, since as I mentioned earlier text pieces referring to those characters generally use the definite article even today. It just seems wrong to refer to "Scarlet Witch" when everyone who isn't themselves personally speaking to The Scarlet Witch would refer to her with the definite article. -mhr 21:12, 18 Dec 2003 (UTC)
I added this as a discussion topic at Wikipedia:Village pump, since I don't see the three of us participating in this debate as forming a consensus anytime soon, and Wikipedia doesn't seem to have an established standard for this issue. -mhr 21:43, 18 Dec 2003 (UTC)

[edit] Things To Do

Hrm... I don't know why I'm putting this here and not under a DC Comics talk page... but we seem to have made decisions about the comic book genre here and not just about Marvel Comics.

  1. Merge The Sandman and Sandman (comics) in some meaningful way.

[edit] Archives of discussion

[edit] See also

[edit] Disputed/Questionable Entries

Who is Barrak? Anonymous user, first post from that IP, misalphabetization and lack of wikification make me suspicious. Plus I've never heard of the guy. -leigh 09:29, Dec 3, 2004 (UTC)

I've reverted the addition. —Lowellian (talk)[[]] 21:42, Dec 3, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Why Two Lists?

Simple enough question - why are there two lists of characters? Dr Archeville 21:27, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)

  • Edit: 2-and-a-half lists -- I see an A-Z character list, followed by a second, longer A-Z character list, then an N-Z character list. Dr Archeville 21:41, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Number

Wouldn't it be a useful resource to know the number of characters? --Jamdav86 18:00, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

  • I would find it difficult since the list is ever changing and theres no definate number of Marvel Characters last time I checked -- Miss Maya Levy 14 September 2005
  • The number has been guestimated at over 5000 (as per Marvel's own website), but in no way has anyone (yet) pegged it to a number. The two best lists known are here and here. The second being more complete. The first being a (MediaWiki) wiki. I hope that helps! -- Jamie

[edit] Ghostrider

I thought he was one of your characters. I was wanting to get a cover picture of him. If he is or you know where I could go to find him would you email me at rickwallenconst@netscape.com thanks,Rick

[edit] Professor Y?

A Professor Y was just added under Professor X. Is there actually a Professor Y, or are we dealing with a cheeky vandal here? Ragdoll 20:41, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

Google has never heard of him. I suggest deletion. Mallanox 23:47, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

Done. Ragdoll 19:45, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Video game characters?

Should characters from Marvel Nemesis: Rise of the Imperfects be included on this list? To my knoweldge they've never been in any Marvel Comics comic, just the video game. Dr Archeville 19:33, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

all of those characters appeared in the marvel nemesis: the imperfect's mini series which was 6 issues long and it served as a prequel to the game

[edit] What is Arsenal doing under Marvels characters list?

As far as I know, Arsenal (formerly Speedy) is a DC comics character, and as one, he should not be put in the "List of Marvel Comics characters". Instead, he should be included in the "List of DC Comics characters", where he already exists. therefore, he should be excluded from the Marvel list seeing that he is not a Marvel comics character.

Is there a Marvel Comics character called Arsenal? It'd not be the first time both companies had characters with identical names. Dr Archeville 12:26, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
  • There have been two characters in Marvel called Arsenal. Both robots. They appeared in The Avengers and Iron Man. Mallanox 09:10, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] what happened to the known relative's lists?

what happened to the known relative's list on the character pages i found kang the conqueror's family tree quite amusing?

  • I noticed the same with Baron Zemo. I thought it was just on his page. Has a template been altered? Mallanox 09:11, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

no it's on every page maybe hyperstorm's family tree was too big so they took them all out

[edit] Araki

Just to let you know i added Araki (comics) to the list after writing the article because he was missing from wikipedia and the list :-) (Neostinker 20:13, 10 October 2006 (UTC))

[edit] Help wanted

Some of you might have notice that I have been rewriting the power summaries on pretty much all the characters. While I believe that I have done a good job recent Wikipedia comic rules have come to light for me (Wikipedia:WikiProject Comics/Superherobox example). Realizing this I know now that I have not done the summaries right.

Now I have gone through and reedited the summaries and made many "actual" summaries. But my one man crusade for change has drained me. My goal was to make all of the character pages as uniform as possible. Now realizing that I will need to go through them all agian is too much for just me.

Now I ask respectfully, becuase Im almost possitive that my edit wern't liked by at least a few, for help with this. Although its only a little bit of the page Ive seen that it can make it look alot better. Any help will be appreciated. I dont expect much, just a few people will be enough. Thefro552 00:29, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] CC of post at Thefro552

[edit] Removing redlinks

Hi. There used to be a template saying an article had too many redlinks, but that went out of use after a policy change. Unless there's a specific compelling reason stated in the edit summary or on the talk page, policy is not to remove most redlinks. Please discuss with the rest of the Comics Project before proceeding. Thanks. --Tenebrae 03:23, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

All of them are now re-added. By the way it would be much appreciated if someone would be kind enough to show me a link to the discussion abou this subject so I can read it for future reference. Thanks Thefro552 19:49, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Request for Comment: Intro

At the suggestion of User:Thefro552 to initiate discussion, this is a Request for Comment regarding the wording of a portion of the intro to List of Marvel Comics characters.

Statements by editors

A previous version of the introduction here included a phrase saying "historically notable characters" are included. I myself inadvertently removed that phrase, and then simply reinserted it here. Since the list does list such extant minor but historically notable characters as Father Time and the Black Marvel, who each had a handful of appearances in the 1940s, I didn't believe I was "changing the rules", but reinserting something factual that was already there. --Tenebrae 03:35, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Oh then thats my bad. Ive read through that paragraph a dozen times and I never saw that portion so I thought it was something you added. Sorry. But I still think that even minor charcters should stay. Notability is really about POV and I personally dont like that. Its called List of Marvel Comics Characters not List of Notable Marvel Comics characters. Thefro552 03:46, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
Oh, hey, I'm with you — and please, no apology necessary. I agree — I think it's important to list, say, Marvel's first Asian hero, even if he only made one or two appearances. My interpretation of the phrase otherwise is that, say, "Police officer Jim Smith" who may have appeared in a single issue needn't be listed. Is that your take?--Tenebrae 03:49, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
Well Im kinda crossed on that. In the case of your example yeah I dont think that Jim Smith should be on there. But not too long ago I added about a dozen small time depowered X-men characters, other mutents from the Xavier school.
Most of them dont have any real speaking parts but I beleive that since we knew there real names, there powers, and had a somewhat brief description of there history then they were alright. Thefro552 14:32, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
Works for me. I vote for removing the line, going on the assumption that readers know that for any list, whether comics characters or tractors, non-notable things won't be on it.--Tenebrae 16:25, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
I think that should work. Thefro552 21:20, 3 February 2007 (UTC)