Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Comics

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The current Comics Collaboration of the Month is Marvel Comics. Please read the nomination text and help improve the article any way you can.

	This article is in the scope of WikiProject Comics, a collaborative effort to build a comprehensive and detailed guide to comics on Wikipedia. Get involved! Edit the article attached to this page or discuss it at the project talk page. Help with current tasks, or visit the notice board.
NA	This page is not an article and does not require a rating on the quality scale.

[edit] To-Do List

	Pending tasks for WikiProject Comics:	edit this list - add to watchlist
	General: Update archives contents list, remove OHOTMU/Who's Who material from character pages Article requests: Alternate versions of Lex Luthor, Alternate versions of Wonder Woman, Clan Apis. Clan Chosen, Fenwick, Khimaera (comics), Jason Macendale, Maximum Press, Mutant Underground Support Engine, Robert Loren Fleming, Sonic Disruptors, Tif et Tondu, Natacha, Yakari, Buddy Longway, Bruno Brazil, Bruce J. Hawker, Ric Hochet, Jerry Spring, Marc Dacier, Canardo, Bogey, Romeo Brown, The Seekers more Image requests: Stuart Immonen, Olivier Coipel, Andrea Di Vito, Tank McNamara Expand: Comic Book, Fables, First American, XX (organization), American Virgin (comics), Chase (comics), Department of Extranormal Operations, Fifth-week event, Maria Hill, Mile High Comics, Norts, Southers, Nora Fries, Project Pegasus, Hard light, Gargoyle (comics), Team X (comics), U-Men (comics), Nebula (comics), Ruins (comics), Arzach, Pride of Baghdad, Andreas Strucker, William Stryker, Ryker's Island, The Crusades (comics), List of comic book swimsuit specials, Amon Sur, more Condense: Aquaman, Hal Jordan, Magneto (comics), Super-Soldier, Witchblade, Wonder Woman, Captain Britain, Mar-Vell, Tabitha Smith, W.I.T.C.H., Doctor Doom Update: Invisible Kid, Linear Men, Mano (comics), Cable & Deadpool, Civil War: Front Line Clean Up: Batman (comic book), Darkseid, Sons of the Tiger, Green Goblin, Iron Fist, Joker (comics), Kingdom Come (comics), List of Superman comics, Raven (comics), Thriller (comic), Xavier's Security Enforcers, more Collaboration of the Month: Marvel Comics For proposed deletions and mergers, disputes, and recently created articles, check the WikiProject Comics Notice Board. edit bullet points

Archives
Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Comics/Archives

Although the editors on this talk page are unlikely to engage in anything less than polite discussion, this Yellow Smiley will nonetheless serve as a reminder for any future editors who may occasionally be tempted to lapse. Courtesy of the Random Smiley Project.

This Yellow Smiley Face is a reminder to be polite, civil, and friendly. Speak softly and wear a big Smiley.

(Explanation)

Contents 1 To-Do List 2 Omnipotence 3 Opposed WPC guideline moves 4 Help with Juggernaut (comics) 5 Recent afd needs merging 6 Virgin Comics copyvios 7 List of Batman films cast members 8 Adopt-a-user

[edit] Omnipotence

What the hell do people think "omnipotence" means when List_of_omnipotent_fictional_characters includes dozens of Marvel and DC characters? You can't have multiple omnipotent characters. A whole bunch of characters listed have never been shown to be omnipotent. The Watchers? Give me a break. Shoester 07:32, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

"You can't have multiple omnipotent characters" - why not? That said I could see that list being tricky. I suspect some may be mistaking omniscience or vast powers for unlimited ones and I'd wonder how you'd prove it. (Emperor 13:29, 1 April 2007 (UTC))

You can have more than one Omnipotent person. And the watchers are Omnipotent.Phoenix741 15:13, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Omnipotent, according to the American Heritage Dictionary, means "Having unlimited or universal power, authority, or force; all-powerful". If you want to get technical about it, it doesn't apply to any comic book character that I've ever seen. Sure, there are lots of characters with abilities that boggle the imagination or are beyond human comprehension, but all powerful means that nothing is beyond that beings accomplishments, no force is greater. Yet, how many supposedly omnipotent characters along the likes of Galactus, the Celestials, the Watchers, the Beyonder, Eternity, Death, and so on and so forth have encountered a force that dwarfs their powers? The combined Infinity Gems have been written as being vastly more powerful than all of those beings combined and yet there's a force written as even more powerful than the gems, namely the Living Tribunal. But wait, there's still supposedly a being greater than the Tribunal known as the One Above All who, to my knowledge, has never actually made an appearance. Like invulnerable, which doesn't seem to technically apply to any comic book character I've seen either, its so overly used in comics that it almost has no real meaning. Odin's Beard 15:38, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

I still don't see why there has to be only one omnipotent person. A lot of religions have pantheons of Gods a number of which would count as omnipotent. (Emperor 15:48, 1 April 2007 (UTC))

Based on the religious beliefs of some people, these gods are all powerful. They're capable of anything and no force is greater than them, nothing whatsoever. I don't know if the Hindu gods, for instance, are real or not. Maybe they are and any number of them could snap their fingers and accomplish anything whatsoever. Comic book characters, however, are known to be fictional characters. Their power is dependent upon the imagination of whoever is writing whatever adventure they find themselves in. No matter how powerful a character is written to be, every so often a more powerful being or force comes along. Thanos, for instance, has been written as achieving omnipotence on multiple occassions. Each time he achieves "ultimate power", his power is greater than the previous time he achieved it. He keeps achieving "ultimate power" because he always winds up losing it, which in and of itself negates that he was omnipotent.Odin's Beard 16:05, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

You cannot involuntarily lose omnipotence. One omnipotence cannot outrank another. Omnipotence cannot become more powerful. Of all the Marvel characters, only the One Above All is ultimately omnipotent -- even though, as a fictional character, OAA only has relative omnipotence. His/her/its omnipotence exists at the pleasure of Marvel Comics. Their fictional status doesn't matter here, though, because the list defines itself as being about fictional characters. Marvel's One Above All fictionally is omnipotent, as far as we know. Do they ever actually call any of these characters omnipotent? Doczilla 05:30, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

(Unindent)It looks like a case of a miss-applied term for the sake of brevity in writing. Both "omnipotence" and "invulnerability" have become short hand for "As close to it as it makes no difference." In the strictest of senses, neither "omnipotence" nor "invulnerability" should be used in an encyclopedic article, except maybe following "all but". That being said, there is a strong tendency in what sources are being used to bandy the terms about with out a second thought. - J Greb 05:47, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Right. Misapplying a term within an article for brevity might make sense. It doesn't justify (a) a misnamed list or (b) inclusion of all those characters if the list means what it says it means. Doczilla 05:54, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Very true. That does bring up a question... Should the list be renamed, that's assuming there is a better name, or should it be placed into AfD? - J Greb 06:30, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

I doubt a sufficiently accurate name could be derived that would survive AfD. I think the only viable options are for it to be either (a) whittled down until all questionable entries are gone or (b) placed into AfD. Although anyone interested in trying to fix the list could be given a chance, I doubt option (a) would really work because people will just keep adding questionable entries. Ultimately, the fact that it's debatable at all makes the list heavily subjective, requiring POV. You know, just by writing this, I've convinced myself AfD is the better route. Until writing these words, I thought I favored giving the list a chance, but it really is chock full of POV no matter what we'd do to it. Doczilla 07:07, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

It could be a good list if it referenced why they are considered omnipotent. I have't read comics in years, but I'm sure they used the word with the beyonder at some point. We shouldn't be judging who is omnipotent, but cataloging which comics said which characters are omnipotent. - Peregrine Fisher 07:31, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

If memory serves, Jim Starlin at least tried to get around the problem in his "Infinity Gauntlet" series (and sequels) but calling most of the Marvel gods "near-omnipotent". Which of course is one more argument that the comics entries on this list are of questionable authenticity since that example alone shows not all writers working with these chars consider them omnipotent by the dictionary definition. Probably this is an AfD in my opinion, inherently POV as written. -Markeer 13:01, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

In light of this discussion, I have now nominated the article for deletion at Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/List_of_omnipotent_fictional_characters. Doczilla 07:13, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

You guys should go read WP:OR. We aren't the ones who pass judgement on what omnipotent means. - Peregrine Fisher 10:07, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Which is exactly what's wrong with the article. If there is room for judgment in trying to make a list that accurately fits the title, it's too subjective for encyclopedic entry. Doczilla 16:56, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Opposed WPC guideline moves

While trying to move some articles by the WPC naming guideline I've met some unexpected opposition to altering XIII (comic book), Soda (comic strip) and Rat-Man (comic), so more voices voicing in would be appreciated. MURGH ^disc. 11:05, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

I commented at each. As I mentioned on the talk pages, Rat-Man should be disambiguated with (comics), the same as Robin (comics); Soda should be disambiguated with (comics) since it's not disambiguating between media types; and XIII could go either way, depending on if we consider a "game" a media type. (I'm leaning towards "yes", and so (comic book) would be appropriate in that case.) Hope this helps : ) - jc37 11:34, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

• Moved continued discussion about XIII (comic book) to Talk:XIII (comic book)#Requested move. - jc37 01:51, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

The above request still stands. Consensus is needed to perform the policy moves.. MURGH ^disc. 12:24, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Help with Juggernaut (comics)

Would anyone mind helping out with this article? There's this anonymous user who insists on adding his biased origin of the Juggernaut, negatively slanted to make him appear worse than he really is.

The latest reversion can be seen here. [1] Examples include changing "Juggernaut underwent a crisis of conscience and joined the team" to "Juggernaut underwent a number of retcons which were used to help remake him into a heroic figure", and stuff like "In an extremely unusual turn for someone of Cain's nature, he immediately befriended people at the mansion as he'd never befriended people before" and "Cain and Xavier had a conversation in which they recounted their past in a way much different from previously shown, and based on these new revelations immediately reconsiled their longtime feud."

I don't know if the user is connected to this fansite, which was added by an anon-user to the Juggernaut's article. The site is run by a Juggernaut fan who is angry at his current redemption, talking about "The rampant disregard of the Juggernaut's prior history and the savage removal of his genitals is far too much for a former fan to watch." I can't help but wonder if this is the guy making all these edits.

Please, any help would be appreciated. --DrBat 21:16, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

How exactly do you wish to be helped. Generally, I have no expertise on Juggernaut. That said, maybe you could outline the above proposal and request for semi-protection? Zuracech lordum 06:04, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

Whoa, checked it out. Edit war going on between DrBat and Luger1. Likely to escalate. If any administrator is checking this out then please assist. I'm afraid that if I butt in, it will likely become worse (that said, I'm going to try). Zuracech lordum 06:10, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Recent afd needs merging

I just closed Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Tommy (comics) as merge. I have no idea where this should be merged to, so I'm leaving it up to you guys. John Reaves (talk) 05:45, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Seems to me that the results are to merge into Morlocks (comics) -- but most of the relevent information is already there at Morlocks (comics)#Mutant_Massacre.

Looking at the number of other one-appearence Morlocks who have stubs linked out from that page, perhaps there's a need to combine them into one "list of Morlocks" or allow the Morlocks (comics) article do that for us and AfD all the stubs. I'm afraid that characters who only appeared in one or two comic books twenty-five years ago are just never going to expand into full articles. ~CS 06:04, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Virgin Comics copyvios

It looks like most articles on Virgin Comics series are copyvios. I just checked some (Snakewoman, The Sadhu (comics), Ramayan 3392 A.D., Devi (comics)) and the characters sections were copied from the company's website on all those, and the issue summaries read like solicitation material (I couldn't find the solicitations on their website, maybe someone else knows where to find them?). --Fritz Saalfeld (Talk) 20:47, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

I agree regarding Snakewoman, Ramayan et al but I have been supervising the page for the Sadhu. The section was previously copied directly from the website but I have worked on it for some while. No online summaries exist for the comics and there is very little material on the web. It might help to create a team that updates Virgin comics or that it be included in the To-Do list. Zuracech lordum 06:01, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

Some of the character descriptions in The Sadhu (comics) are only slightly reworded copies of their descriptions at the official Virgins Comics website, too. They might have been changed a little, but it would be better to rewrite these from scratch. --Fritz Saalfeld (Talk) 09:47, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

That would be because whoever created the page originally copied it as such. I reworded it but I do not think there is any other way to reword it without succintly explaining the character. In depth description should either be in the plot summary or the individual character page. That said, I have worked on the character descriptions again and please check on whether it is suitable now. Zuracech lordum 10:22, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

What shipping month(s) are we looking at? It's possible that it's a copy from the printed Previews that Diamond sends out. I've got a stockpile of those so if I had a specific month I could do a bit of checking... - J Greb 06:14, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

I believe that each article (except for the Sadhu) was written before the comics were published so only information announced on the website was available. This means that no one has updated the pages since the release of the comics. The previews are only three pages and hence not reliable to use as sources to update from. Ideally, someone should read every comic published till now and then update the respective page. Zuracech lordum 06:39, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

Hrm... not quite what I meant. The issues sections seem to be a direct list of the solicitation copy Virgin provided Diamond Comic Distributors for their Previews, the catalogue the send to comic shops so they can order the books. For example: the blurbs for Snakewoman #7, Devi #7, and Ramayan 3392 A.D. #5 all are the copy from Previews vol XVI #11 pg 341. I can't speak to the rest of the article content, but the issue sections are caopyvios. - J Greb 07:08, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

Ok. If the point of debate is that the whether or not the material on those articles are copyvios then I presume that it is a conclusive yes. Still, I hope someone does contribute to those articles and updates them so that at least the wiki articles remain original. Someone should add a clean-up tag to each of the other articles. Zuracech lordum 07:29, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

Just remove anything that's a copy vio. The sooner it's gone, the sooner someone will replace it with something legal. - Peregrine Fisher 07:44, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

If that's the consensus, then will do so. Copyvios removed. Zuracech lordum 07:54, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] List of Batman films cast members

In the last week, Batman cast lists got turned into List of Batman films cast members. I find the charts interesting, but the extreme alterations -- (1) turning the lists into charts, (2) changing the title, and (3) removing all of the TV shows, both live and animated -- turn it into a different article altogether. I'm posting here to ask for comment because I like the old version enough that I might not view the new version objectively. I'm not sure I like the thought of redoing an article so extremely that it's not the same article any more unless the old version had been delete-worthy terrible. Doczilla 21:26, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

A few thoughts...

The old structure, while more inclusive, was effectively culling cast lists out of the various article, and keeping the existing formatting. That feels counter productive, as well as just making a list for the sake of making a list.

The new format is still effectively culling the information, but it is attempting to put it in a more usable or informative format. The table s could use a bit of enforced consistency, the "Theatrical motion pictures" section looks out of place with 3 sections to the single "Cast" section in the others.

The loss of the television series information isn't good. If the article is to exist, it should cover all the attempts to translate the comic book property to performance arts. When the conversion was done, ideally the title should have become "Lists of Batman film and television cast members". Though, looking at what is currently there, the editor may have, rightly, decided that converting all the material would have resulted in a very, very long, unmanageable article. If that was the case, an attempt to create a sister article "List of Batman television series cast members" should have been made. (We may need to wrangle over "radio series", "plays", and "video games" if productions in such venues exist.)

At this point, since the TV series info still exists, I'd make two suggestions:

1. Make the charts consistent. Kill the "Villains section" in the modern films and split all along the "Primary" and "Secondary/Supporting" lines.
2. Use the current article as a template for a television cast list and then cross link the lists in the lead.

As an aside... this formatting may be useful for other like lists that either exist or could exist, such as for Superman and Spider-Man.

- J Greb 21:57, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Adopt-a-user

I really like the adopt-a-user idea but considering how I seem to be primarily have involved myself in helping out in articles related to comics, I'd like an "adopter" within this community. That said, would anyone be willing to assist in such a fashion? Zuracech lordum 11:29, 7 April 2007 (UTC)