Talk:List of minor Marvel Comics characters

Articles merged to the list through AfD or Merge discusion (Current count of 12)

Deleted characters

Would it be possible to have character articles that were deleted for notability to be merged into this list? For example, Albion (Marvel Comics) and Birdy (comics). 129.33.19.254 (talk) 14:07, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Possibly. The point that the text would have to bee weeded down and plot held to a absolute minimum would have to be observed though. - J Greb (talk) 22:34, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Of course, that makes sense. An admin would have to undelete them, but I don't see why they couldn't be merged. 129.33.19.254 (talk) 13:50, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

Yes, no, maybe so? 129.33.19.254 (talk) 18:08, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

I can restore Birdy for a merge. I'm a little leery on Albion, because someone freaked out last time I tried to restore the edit history there. BOZ (talk) 13:58, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

I decided to be WP:BOLD anyway, at least for the purpose of a discussion. BOZ (talk) 15:56, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

Killraven's Freemen

Hello

I like this list idea but in my opinion, the tiny articles about a character should be first merge when possible with articles that share a link before considering to finish in this list. For me the characters Carmilla Frost, M'Shulla Scott, Old Skull, all Killraven's Freemen should be in the article Killraven in a section called Freemen.

--Crazy runner (talk) 05:04, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

And all would wind up being either reduced to one line or the section excised as tangential, at best, to an article on the character Killraven.

This way the minimal background for the characters can be presented and not be at odds with the article focus.

- J Greb (talk) 06:07, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

I disagree. In my opinion, they are already tangential for this list, they only appear in "a post-apocalyptic alternate future of the Marvel Comics universe". I prefer a list about minor characters in the mainstream continuity. How many people who read Marvel know about Killraven ? The other article is on Killraven, a section about Killraven's Freemen doesn't seem out of focus. Are there more than three lines to tell about these characters ? Other articles can be found with a section "Supporting characters".--Crazy runner (talk) 10:06, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

Limiting it to "the mainstream continuity" - Earth 616 IIUC - is just a bit fannish since Marvel has published material outside of that continuity that we are treating as notable publications with notable major characters. Now there may be enough minor character articles that when all is said an done List of minor X-Men characters isn't going to be the only split off and there will be List of minor Ultimate Marvel characters, List of minor M2 characters, etc, but splitting by large, self contained sections (X-Men) or imprint.

As for other articles that do cast lists... I don't think I've seen a comics character focused article with one. Focused on teams, yes, on a story, yes, and on a magazine/series, yes, but not a character.

- J Greb (talk) 16:48, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

I have in mind the article Shang-Chi with its section Supporting characters. Carmilla Frost, M'Shulla Scott, Old Skull appear in the adventures of the character Killraven (the trade paperback is named The Essential Killraven) and there are supporting characters. There are not a lot of sentences to write about them. In my opinion, the information should be in the Killraven article.--Crazy runner (talk) 16:23, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

hrm... And reading through that the section is, tone wise, at odds with the rest of the article, including the lead - it jumps form "The character" to "The series" and back. And in both cases I'm not sure it's possible to restructure the articles to focus on a series. Both characters have been used by Marvel out side of their "home" series. And we would either have to have a secondary, third party source providing a definition of what the "home series" is since they span multiple titles. - J Greb (talk) 17:44, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

List

I have been noodling away on possible characters to merge into such an article, which might help here. User:Emperor/Sandbox/Minor characters. (Emperor (talk) 15:05, 5 June 2011 (UTC))

Nathaniel Richards

With the increased focus Nathaniel Richards has had in SHIELD and Future Foundation, he might be a candidate to get his own article. He certainly has appeared beyond the statement of "supporting characters, heroes, and/or villains that appear infrequently to those that only take part in a single storyline or appear in a single comic book" mentioned in the article's lead and has had more appearances than many other heroes and characters that currently have their own articles.207.237.208.153 (talk) 18:45, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

To be honest, he still falls under "infrequent use". And I'd rather see the section expanded using material that is grounded in the real world and establishes actual notability first rather than split out the character allow to adding more plot, and more plot, and potentially even more plot.

And because other articles haven't gotten merged to her that should doesn't justify splitting something out.

- J Greb (talk) 21:35, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

Even though he is a supporting character for the Future Foundation, Nathaniel Richards' section here should be updated with important parts in FF. Off topic of this J Greb, would you mind if Rl'nnd be redrirected to the Skrull page with every info on him being placed under the Known Skrulls section. Rtkat3 (talk) 9:13, May 1 2011 (UTC)

• Nathaniel Richards: "and joining the Future Foundation." seems to cover it without going into overblown detail about the plot of the FF issues. Or is there a short line or two, from a critique stand point not a in0story one, that really needs to be added?
• Rl'nnd: All things considered, the character us already there with:

"Rl'nnd - Son of Rm'twr. Rl'nnd is an undercover X-Skrull agent participating in the Secret Invasion. He has displayed the combined powers of several X-Men. Killed by Ms. Marvel."

Marginally there is material that would be lost by removing what is here since it will not be moved to Skrulls. Ideally, the point in the Skrulls list could link to Rl'nnd so as to point to more information.

- J Greb (talk) 11:11, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

Characters with the same name

What's the policy on characters like Damballah (comics)? Near as I can tell, that's the only name for both characters. Should they share an entry, or be DAB'd by (demon) and (human)? Argento Surfer (talk) 15:06, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

I go with one entry with the "Demon" and "Voodoo Pries" sub headings at the most. - J Greb (talk) 00:32, 17 November 2012 (UTC)

Merge?

I don't want to "propose" this yet, I just wanted to gauge reactions. Would it make more sense to merge this article in with List of Marvel Comics characters? And instead of just leaving those pages as simple lists, you either give each character a brief description with a link to their main article or a minor character entry, based on notability? Seems like it would centralize all of the Marvel character stuff, clean everything up and make it easier to keep track of all articles based on Marvel characters, weeding out the ones that don't need their own articles. -Fandraltastic (talk) 18:23, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

I would be fine with it, and willing to help in the transition. I think the list of names only is useless. Argento Surfer (talk) 19:45, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

I started working on it on the Q page, and merged the article Quiet Bill into it. I think it works well. -Fandraltastic (talk) 20:25, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

That does look nice. I redirected the Quasar link to Quasar (comics) to dab the name, and moved Wendell's info to the V page. I also added the Comic Character list header template for all the characters. I'll continue with the V page tomorrow. Argento Surfer (talk) 21:27, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

Hey sorry, I didn't see you replied here so I posted a message on your talk page. But all of those external links should be posted in the external links sections of articles for characters who have them, and should only be used on the list for characters without articles.

That's also one thing we need consensus on- should we list characters based on their code name, or their real name? Because each character should really only be located in one location on the list. I think in most cases we should go with what their article name is, provided they followed wikipedia naming policies (like WP:COMMONNAME. So I took characters like Phyla-Vell and Neutron (Marvel Comics) off the Q page and left them on the P and N pages, respectively. And I think Vaughn belongs on the Q page, in the same way Tony Stark will go on the I page and Steve Rogers will go on the C page. -Fandraltastic (talk) 21:35, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

Ha. I just changed Quasar back to a Dab before I saw this. I think Stark and Rogers will be fine under their code names not only because they're common, but also because there aren't many Iron Mans or Captain Americas. In the case of multiple characters like Quasar or Nova (comics), I think real names with a DAB under the codename would be best. Argento Surfer (talk) 21:58, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

Ok, that works. We can always change it later if it starts to get messy. -Fandraltastic (talk) 21:59, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

Thoughts:

• On some level that was an original goal in a way, but sticking with "minor" characters it allowed for less friction. Litterally explaining why some characters get merged and redirected and some don't.
• Leaving the main list as is provides a few options these don't.
  • Characters can be listed multiple times on that list to allow for ease of look up, Quasar and Captain Marvel are good examples where the "dab" can be under the code name with a line for each "holder", and then each character can be listed separately. (And that avoids the debate on "codename"/"Alter ego"/"common name".)
  • As a page/file it has to be split up less than these do. (Literally, this and the DC equivalent at close to the point of needing some splits.)
• The format this is in also allows for lists like the Celestial and the minor X-Men characters lists. Sets that are predominately tied to limited topic can be split out.

- J Greb (talk) 22:57, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

Good points all. However I think the explanation for why some characters get merged and others don't is fairly straightforward: real-world content. If you can establish notability outside of a few appearances in the comics and a minor appearance or two in other media than an article is warranted. If not, it isn't. That seems to always have essentially been the policy, however there are probably hundreds of comics articles that violate it at the moment, with no specific place to put the material. This continues to get longer and longer and will eventually be split alphabetically; at some point it becomes close to the same content as the main "List of Marvel Characters" articles, minus 20 or so links per letter to notable characters. Looking at the list articles now there are dozens and dozens of links that are alphabetized by first name, last name and codename. To me that seems redundant and clutters the actual quality linkage with sort of useless fluff. How often will people be looking for Hobgoblin #3 by first name, without just going straight to the Hobgoblin page?

The code name/alter-ego thing can occasionally become an issue, but it does with article titles as well. I think the same sort of solutions and consensuses can be reached with where to list them.

The Celestials question is a good one, however I think there are issues with the X-Men split: are characters from solo Wolverine comics "X-Men characters"? How about from Gambit titles? X-Force titles? Deadpool titles? It all starts to get a bit vague and original researchy. -Fandraltastic (talk) 23:19, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

I tend to agree with the definition of "minor" - it really is the odd character that has a single or limited number of appearances that generates secondary source information justifying an article.

The problem is more along the lines of what happened with Protege - LSS, the editor who did the bulk of the work on the article balked when it got down-sized, de-imaged, and merged. It to a fair amount to avoid actually taking the in-story plot dump to AFD to get the merge done.

As for listing, characters such as Henry Pym will be looked for under multiple names. Having those characters in the list under the different names makes sense. Also on that point... I'm very much in favor of "common names" being used - that is what the characters are generally referred to in 3rd party sources. ie "Tony Stark" and "Iron Man", not "Anthony Edward 'Tony' Stark". With where this is going, the text is essentially going to be a lead or lead-like. The "full name" can be handle in a secion in a full article (if warranted) or in the external article the list points to. (And yes, I do favor that: just becasue it doesn't fit policy here does not mean we cannot point people who are interested to other places.) And I've never been a fan of the "realistic names sorted by the 'first' name" concept.

To be honest, the X-Men list went up first to nip the "X-Men parents and siblings must have pages". This followed to cover the rest. Where I would go with "X-Men" is "Did the book come from 'X-Men'?" So the list you point to would all fall there. Right up to the point that the solo series have enough characters to justify a split.

- J Greb (talk) 01:03, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

That all sounds reasonable and it makes sense to link major characters with multiple common names from both spots. Henry Pym and Ant-Man and Giant-Man are all commonly used, and it makes sense to link all three.

On the X-Men list, that makes sense. (Although it can get a bit ticky-tacky as certain "minor" characters can appear in multiple, varied titles.) As does the Celestials thing. But I think making the full alphabetical list fairly encompassing doesn't mean there can't also be lists of Celestials or Supporting X-Men characters, as long as there's some value in listing them again to the reader I don't see the issue. We have lists of X-Men and Avengers. The list of minor X-Men characters is fairly eclectic as is, though.

As for the issue of splitting from your original comment, I threw this together as a proof of concept. There are certain letters (A, C, S) which will certainly be quite long, and using a template like this as a TOC rather than the default alphabetical one allows for more flexibility. -Fandraltastic (talk) 01:38, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

In relation to sub-lists, I'm more of a mind of 1) keeping the teams together and 2) asking "Is Foo related more to a specific charater's series or to the team series?".

With the Celetials, given the way things are going, I'm tempted to suggest merging the list into the main article as a very stripped down bullet point list with the names linking to the over-list through redirects. (Yes, I'm a fan of actually using the redirects...)

- J Greb (talk) 22:44, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

Proposing to reinstate redirect to List of Marvel Comics characters

Wikipedia isn't meant to be exhaustive. These characters only each show up a handful of times and aren't notable in or out of comics. It's not necessary to give them devoted sections on a list. Namenamenamenamename (talk) 19:03, 25 October 2018 (UTC)