Talk:Lists of Marvel Comics characters/Archive 2

This talk page was archived on December 15, 2003.

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 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.
 * 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:
 * Creed, Graydon (see Graydon Creed)
 * 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:
 * Iron Man
 * Stark, Tony (see Iron Man)
 * Tony Stark (see Iron Man)
 * 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.
 * 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.

Disambiguation
List of possible disambiguation phrases:


 * Storm (comics)
 * Storm (Marvel character)
 * Storm (Marvel Comics)
 * Storm (Marvel Comics character)
 * Storm (superhero)

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.

Inclusion of characters

 * Whether a character is important enough to warrant inclusion in this list will be determined by number of appearances in the Marvel Chronology Project.
 * Please be more specific about this. How many appearances? Appearances in what, exactly?  Number of issues, or number of references in the project, or what? -mhr 17:18, 25 Nov 2003 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure yet either. First let me say that I am in no way affiliated with the Chronology Project; I am only using it because it is the most complete database of its kind that I know of in existence. The reason that I brought up this point is because the article shouldn't become a list of every single character that has ever, at any time, appeared in the Marvel Universe. That would make the list grow to huge proportions, better suited for websites dedicated to indexing Marvel characters. (For example, how many people know or care about characters like the Sky-Walker, appearing only on one page of a single decades-old issue of Daredevil?) Yet it is difficult to arbitrarily say whether a character is "important" or not; one character that is important to one person might not be important to another. I thought that a way to set a definitive standard would be by number of appearances. However, I haven't determined that exact number, nor would I advocate setting one such number immediately. Rather, I think it will gradually emerge by consensus. --Lowellian 23:02, Nov 26, 2003 (UTC)
 * Personally, I think there's little point in having a standard if characters such as Marrow, Shinobi Shaw and Pip The Troll are included. These are extremely borderline characters.  I guess it comes down to what the purpose of the page is.  It could be a listing of every Marvel character someone wants to see here (not necessarily a bad thing), or it should filter based on some ultimate goal (e.g., characters who have had their own titles; or characters who are not members of some group with which they're better known than on their own, such as many individual X-Men; or, major characters plus characters with entries but who aren't linked to from any other WP page).  I guess it doesn't really matter to me, I'm just suggesting that the page's purpose should drive who appears on it. -mhr 23:42, 28 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Definite articles

 * I'm still not sold on avoiding use of definite articles such as "The" in page titles. To address some specific points from Lowellian's guidelines:
 * 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!")
 * While this is true, it's also simply a normal contraction based on context. But there are quite a few characters who I think are very closely associated with definite-article names, and who would not be (say) introduced to someone without the definite article.  Clear examples include "The Wasp", "The Vision", "The Scarlet Witch".  I think some exceptions (such as the comic title Vision and the Scarlet Witch) are done simply because they scan better in one particular instance.  But The Vision is definitely a character I associate with a definite article name.
 * 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.
 * Not sure I really buy this as a generality. "The Avengers" have always been referred to with "The" unless someone is talking specifically to the Avengers.  In fact, no one would ever write (for instance) "talking to Avengers" to refer to the whole team, they'd write "talking to the Avengers".  I can see there being some case-by-case exceptions (The Batman, for instance, clearly is simply Batman today), but in general I think characters who have "the" in their name should have it in their page title unless there's a clear and long-term shift for that individual character away from it.


 * While companies might be moving away from using definite articles, they could also move back, and I think most of these characters are much better known, even today, with the definite article.
 * Potentially confusing to users and editors of Wikipedia who are looking for a character and leave off the article.
 * I think this is a red herring. We can use redirects for this.


 * I think we should retain definite articles for most characters which have them, unless the WP guidelines explicitly state otherwise (though I couldn't find such a guideline after a short search). -mhr 18:32, 4 Dec 2003 (UTC)


 * Okay, how about this? Check out these three links to large sites that show up pretty high on Internet search engines: (1) www.chronologyproject.com (2) www.marveldirectory.com/indivuals.htm (3) www.marvunapp.com/Appendix/appchar.htm. Notice that in all three cases, the listings of characters do not include articles. Sure, those aren't official sites. So take a look at the official site: www.marvel.com/bios/index.htm. Again, no articles, even for characters like the Hulk, the Thing, and the Human Torch. Or even the Avengers, for that matter, though I admit the official site does not have entries up yet for the Scarlet Witch or the Wasp. --Lowellian 21:04, Dec 4, 2003 (UTC)


 * Take a look at the actual articles at www.marvel.com/bios/index.htm. Some quotes from the articles:


 * &#8226; "The Hulk possesses superhuman strength that increases as he becomes enraged[...]", "The Hulk is a living, breathing engine of destruction.", and many similar references in the Hulk article.
 * &#8226; "On that day, the Avengers were born[...]", etc.
 * &#8226; "As an X-Man, the blue-furred Beast has dedicated the totality of his physical gifts and scientific genius[...]", "[...]the Beast has never earned a Nobel Prize[...]", etc.


 * And so forth. www.marveldirectory.com/indivuals.htm is similar in this way.


 * So on reflection I don't agree that the use of the definite articles is being phased out, by... pretty much anyone.


 * Omitting articles for a list of items is common enough, precisely because it makes it more difficult to scan the listing (though doing things like "Thing, The" and "Hulk, The" is also common). And for this list (i.e., the article for which this is a talk page), that seems reasonable.  But for the actual articles, I think we should use the definite articles in the titles, because they're part of the character's full name, and are still commonly used (and probably always will be, with a few exceptions).


 * -mhr


 * But although the articles on the cited websites use "the" within the text of the article, they do not actually use "the" in the titles of the articles, not just on the list of articles, but even on the actual article pages themselves.


 * Also, I looked up entries in the Marvel Encyclopedia today. It was published in 2002 by Marvel, so it's both recent and official (and it's an encyclopedia). The table of contents list characters without articles. Furthermore, none of the actual article pages (even for Hulk, Scarlet Witch, Thing, Vision, and Wasp), list the articles in the title.


 * I'm not denying that some characters are sometimes referred to with the word "the", but only within text. The titles of encyclopedic articles on characters should not have articles within them.


 * --Lowellian 01:19, Dec 6, 2003 (UTC)

Last name, first name
I'm sorry if I'm dense, but what's the point. Why not list all ways, within reason? I can understand a paper-index listing this way, but since these are hyperlinks, why not make it a full listing?

Contrast guideline:
 * Iron Man
 * Stark, Tony (see Iron Man)
 * Tony Stark (see Iron Man)

with: - UtherSRG 23:14, 7 Dec 2003 (UTC)
 * Iron Man
 * Stark, Tony
 * Tony Stark

Because that's not Wikipedia standard. We use first name first. RickK 23:19, 7 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Yes, I understand that - for the actual entry. But isn't part of the point of polymorphic hyperlinks the ability to link not have to conform to the old standards set by the needs of a paper-based industry? UtherSRG 00:25, 8 Dec 2003 (UTC)

The reason that I advocated the original guideline is so that people looking at the list can clearly see what the main entry of a character is. That way, on another article page that they write, Wikipedians who can see this central index of characters are less likely to make the mistake of linking to Rogers, Steve or Steve Rogers rather than to Captain America, like they should. Also, please, UtherSRG, if you are going to make changes that directly go against the guidelines, then please discuss them on the Talk page before making the changes. Thanks. --Lowellian 07:10, Dec 8, 2003 (UTC)


 * My apologies for that.... I had made the change before seeing the guideline. UtherSRG 23:41, 8 Dec 2003 (UTC)

The guideline:

(1) ...makes it clear that there is one main article for the character, and what that main article is. That way, editors of Wikipedia know what article is the preferred link.

(2) ...makes it clear that different names are related. For example, consider


 * Marvel Girl

It is not apparent without checking the link that Marvel Girl and Jean Grey are connected. However, contrast


 * Marvel Girl (see Jean Grey)

It is immediately clear Marvel Girl and Jean Grey are connected. This will be useful to editors of Wikipedia. --Lowellian 07:43, Dec 8, 2003 (UTC)

Ok. But I'll say that this is probably the best reason why I'm wrong: UtherSRG 18:33, 8 Dec 2003 (UTC)
 * Weapon X (see Wildchild or Wolverine)

Visibility of disambiguation phrases on this page
When I was first making this page, I wrote this guideline:


 * In the list that appears on this page, the text "(Marvel character)" should not be visible on links; thus, for example, the link to Wolverine would be: Wolverine.

(Since then, of course, the disambiguation phrase has morphed from "(Marvel character)" to "(comics)".)

But the point I wanted to get at was that after working on the page for a while, I began to wonder whether this guideline was even a good idea. The problem with having the disambiguation phrase disappear is that then no one knows what the main article for a character is without checking the link on this page. This results in editors of Wikipedia linking to Wolverine on other pages thinking that they are linking to the main article for the character, when they are actually linking to an article on an animal species and should actually be linking to Wolverine (comics). (Obviously, such a problem cannot be solved by making the entire Wolverine article a redirect, since that article on an animal species exists; we can&mdash;and this is what has already been done&mdash;put a message at the top of the Wolverine article linking to the Wolverine (comics) article.)

This problem was by no means limited to Wolverine alone. I found numerous cases of this happening in Wikipedia with a multitude of characters, and I corrected some of them when I came across them.

Certainly, in other articles, the disambiguation phrases should not be visible; that is, we should definitely use Wolverine in other articles.

But I wonder if, in this list of Marvel Comics characters, we should go ahead and make the disambiguation phrase visible. This page can be regarded as not only a resource for readers of Wikipedia, but as a resource for editors as well. That is, it serves as a central collection of links to articles involving Marvel Comics characters, and also as a reference tool for editors wanting to know what the title for the main article for a character is. In that case, wouldn't it be more useful to have the disambiguation phrase be visible, not on the links of other articles, but just on the links of this page? When someone is editing another page, they can check this page to see what they should link to for a character.

Another case where the visibility of the disambiguation phrase would be useful would be for creators of nonexisting pages for characters. It would help them in checking whether a page has already been created for the character. Consider, for example, Domino. At the time I write this, she does not yet have her own character page. Suppose she hadn't been added to the list on this page yet, and some Wikipedian thinks of her and adds her. Only, this Wikipedian adds her as Domino. The link turns blue (or whatever color normal links are in your browser). This Wikipedian thinks, oh, okay, she already has an article, great, no more need to do anything with her. Only he's forgotten that "domino" is also a game, and that the link is linking to the game, rather than to the character. Now, other Wikipedian editors are browsing this page. They also see the Domino highlighted as blue. Unless they check the link, they have no way of knowing that it's actually linking to the wrong thing. Whereas if we make all disambiguation phrases visible on this page, other Wikipedian editors would automatically see Domino and say, hey, that's not right, we need to make that link Domino (comics). Once they do that, they would also see a dead link, and know that it needs to be fixed.

If all the disambiguation phrases were hidden, then a character linking to the wrong page would be more easily overlooked, and the first people to discover the error might well be people who only browse, but do not edit Wikipedia. They would be confused at why the link is wrong.

What do other people think? It seems to me that there are advantages both to having the disambiguation phrase be visible and to making it disappear.

--Lowellian 08:40, Dec 8, 2003 (UTC)


 * It should disappear. One can easily hover on the link to view the disambiguation data. UtherSRG 12:53, 8 Dec 2003 (UTC)


 * I agree with UtherSRG. I generally go to the real page anyway to make sure I have the right name.  The page should be reader-friendly first and foremost, not writer-friendly.  Additionally, different characters will have slightly different disambiguations in their page names (e.g., Wolverine (comics) vs. Changeling (Marvel Comics)), so it looks funny to have the different asides in there.  Let's just display the character name without the disambig info. -mhr 01:53, 11 Dec 2003 (UTC)


 * Okay, sure, I can accept invisible disambiguation phrases. --Lowellian 19:59, Dec 11, 2003 (UTC)

Multiple Characters with the same name
What's to be done about this? There were 3 or 4 Angels, 2 Thunderbirds, etc. Marvel uses a Roman numeral to differentiate between different characters with the same name. I think we should do the same. UtherSRG 18:35, 8 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Thanks for bringing up this topic. The problem with the Roman numeral system is that different people may disagree on the numbering. An example is described on www.marveldirectory.com:


 * "Phoenix, there are three people with that name--two of them I hope you know: Jean Grey and Rachel Summers. Everyone says that Jean Grey is Phoenix I--well that's not the case. Baron Zemo (aka Citizen V) first had the name Phoenix in 1973 (Captain America #168); Jean Grey didn't turn to the Phoenix until Oct. '74 (X-Men #101)."

Other difficult cases present themselves. Consider Ghost Rider; how exactly do you do his numbering? And except for us hard-core comics fans, who knows about the Roman numeral numbering system? Casual comics fans probably do not think of Dan Ketch as "Ghost Rider (II)". They probably just think of him as Ghost Rider. (And it's debatable who exactly are "Ghost Rider (III)" and "Ghost Rider (IV)", or if one or both of those characters even exist.) Also, are we supposed to consider the Scarlet Spider to be "Spider-Man (II)" for his brief stint as Spider-Man? And what are we supposed to do with characters of the same name that belong to multiple companies, like Captain Marvel and Sandman? Also, how exactly would we do the disambiguation?


 * Thunderbird (comics) (II)
 * Thunderbird II
 * Thunderbird (II)
 * Thunderbird II (comics)
 * Thunderbird (II) (comics)

Using Roman numerals can get pretty confusing. I think that it would probably be easiest to have just one article for the character, without any Roman numerals, but to describe all incarnations of that character on one same page. That is, do something like the articles Captain Marvel, Phoenix, Red Skull, and Sandman.

Incidentally, if multiple pages exist for some character of the same name, I would suggest merging them (in the case of Phoenix, I think it's okay to leave it and the Jean Grey and Rachel Summers articles alone because the Phoenix article focuses on the women's identities as a cosmic force and because the Phoenix article has links to the two women, who have different names and thus different articles). --Lowellian 22:36, Dec 9, 2003 (UTC)


 * I agree it is difficult, but I'm not sure if I agree with you. For one thing, we wouldn't have to devise the Roman Numerals, as there are already ample sources for us to point to to help folks keep the system correct. It could even be an article and not just a section in a Talk:. However, since we're not creating separate articles for different characters with the same name in different companies at this point, I think working with your proposal is reasonable. If it gets difficult, then the single article can become a disambiguation page and the article split into multiple articles. --UtherSRG 01:26, 10 Dec 2003 (UTC)


 * I concur. Putting the three or more Marvel incarnations of Captain Marvel on a single page doesn't seem like a bad thing, especially since it provides some useful chronology (even if one of them will just be a link to Photon). -mhr 01:53, 11 Dec 2003 (UTC)


 * If multiple comic book publishers use a character of the same name, then the disambiguation phrase "(comics)" should still be used rather than "(Marvel Comics)", "(DC Comics)", etc. The article for that character should include descriptions of each version of the character from all the comic book universes in which the character exists.
 * This keeps the disambiguation phrase consistent.
 * Prevents people from linking to the wrong page when they are not aware of the existence of the character from the other universe. That is, links with the disambiguation phrase "(comics)" will always work.
 * It is extremely rare for the name of a popular character to be used by multiple publishers. With a few rare exceptions, when the same name is used by multiple publishers, usually either all versions of the characters are obscure, or one version is very popular and the rest are obscure.


 * Clarification: I think having multiple incarnations of a character on a single page makes sense when the incarnations are related in some significant way. For instance, all the Marvel Comics versions of Captain Marvel.  But I think that, for instance, characters with the same name from different companies should have separate pages, so there should be separate pages for the DC/Fawcett and Marvel versions of Captain Marvel, since the only connection between them is that Roy Thomas created the Marvel character as a thin homage to the Fawcett character - but they're really completely different.  I definitely feel that the two Changeling (comics) characters should have separate pages (c.f. Talk:Changeling (comics)). -mhr 21:08, 11 Dec 2003 (UTC)


 * I agree. I didn't at first, but seeing how it is turning out with Captain Marvel and Changeling, I really don't like it. So we now have a problem with coming up with new disambiguation phrases. I don't like 'Changeling (Marvel Comics)' & 'Changeling (DC Comics)'. I prefer 'Changeling (comics - DC)' & Changeling (comics - Marvel)'. -- UtherSRG 00:27, 12 Dec 2003 (UTC)


 * I think I'd prefer Changeling (comics, Marvel) or Changeling (comics, Marvel Comics) a bit over using the dashes such as Changeling (comics - Marvel). Commas seem slightly more encyclopedic to me, but it's no big deal.  These pipe, respectively, as Changeling, Changeling, and Changeling (without putting anything after the pipe, though WP adds a value after you save it), so any would technically work.


 * Looking at these three options, I think my favorite is Changeling (comics, Marvel Comics), which scans fairly well and leaves nothing in doubt to anyone looking at the title. -mhr 00:49, 12 Dec 2003 (UTC)


 * I'd prefer "(Marvel Comics)" and "(DC Comics)" over "(comics, Marvel)", "(comics, Marvel Comics)", "(comics) (Marvel Comics)", or "(comics - Marvel)". Having said that, though, I'll once again put in a word for "(comics)". The point is that we want to make these links as easy to find as possible, and "(comics)" would really just do that job well. Someone who is only vaguely familiar with comics and just looking for some info could find it easiest on a general page about the character, so long as the various sections of that page make it clear that these are different characters. Why doesn't Wikipedia have a policy about tiered disambiguations? Because it's not needed. The different characters with the same name may be completely different characters, but they are still comics characters, and I daresay the mainstream thinks of characters in terms of comics characters, rather than in terms of Marvel character.


 * Incidentally, I think it's ironic that I started out preferring the disambiguation phrase "(Marvel Comics)" in the beginnning, and then mhr convinced me that "(comics)" is preferable, and now I'm arguing for "(comics)" and mhr is arguing for something more specific. (Yeah, I realize that it's not a precise reversal of position since mhr is only arguing for using a more specific disambiguation phrase in certain cases.) :) --Lowellian 22:36, Dec 12, 2003 (UTC)


 * I don't feel that the title's disambiguation name should make it easy to find. That's what the WP search engine and disambiguation pages are for.  So a user has to make one extra click - I don't think that's a bad thing.  (It may even be a good thing - he might learn something from the disambiguation page.  I know I do, sometimes.)  I think the disambiguation name should be (1) simple, and (2) clear.  I think (comics) is both the simplest while still being clear - in most cases.


 * However, I also feel it's a good idea not to have several characters of any substantial length on the same page. Disambiguation agrees with me: "Several small articles of just a paragraph or so each can co-exist on a single page, separated by headings. But as each section grows, there comes a point where each meaning must have a page of its own."


 * This is a bit of a gray area; arguably the Marvel Comics version of Changeling is a very minor character whereas the DC character is more significant (having been actively used in multiple comics at various times for over 30 years), so they could coexist on the same page (assuming we can convince the fellow at 65.35.69.180 that the Marvel Changeling doesn't need a "vital statistics" section...). But I think it's absolutely clear that Captain Marvel should be split into multiple articles, and probably Sandman as well. -mhr 00:18, 13 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I think we're getting closer to a solution. Let me see if I can summarize where we are at, and take us the next step further.


 * The general form for disambiguating a comic book term (character, group, etc.) will be Character (comics)
 * If there are multiple terms with the same name
 * If only one term is a major term and all others are minor, then they should all be listed (minor terms first?) on one page.
 * If multiple terms have significant entries (as per mhr's quote above) then all the significant entries should get their own article, and the minor ones (if any) should stay on a disambiguation page. According to Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (people with the same name) my proposed (comics, Marvel) doesn't fit well, and I'm back to agreeing about using (Marvel Comics), or just (Marvel).

So we may have some characters listed in the following ways:


 * Character - unambiguous entry
 * Character (comics) - disambiguated from Character
 * Character (Marvel Comics) - disambiguated from either of the two above

Once we're done and generally agreed, we should put a summary of this in something pointed to by Naming conventions and/or Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions

-- UtherSRG 18:45, 13 Dec 2003 (UTC)


 * Okay, I can accept that compromise. One more point: we can put related characters of the same publisher (like the two Thunderbirds) on the same page, right? --Lowellian 21:05, Dec 13, 2003 (UTC)


 * Yes indeed, particularly if the characters are somewhat related. It would be hard to imagine two characters with the same name in the same comics universe not being somewhat related to each other, especially if they are both major characters. I would say no only if the two characters in question have nothing in common except that they have the same name and they exist in the same universe. And again, they'd have to be two major characters to warrant separate articles. UtherSRG 21:53, 13 Dec 2003 (UTC)


 * I agree. There are a few characters of potential concern, such as Mar-vell and Genus versions of Captain Marvel, and several incarnations of DC's Starman, but as long as the articles are chronologically written and contain a table of contents, that's probably sufficient to have characters of the same company on the same page. -mhr 23:11, 13 Dec 2003 (UTC)