Board Thread:Administrative/@comment-4651179-20180806025410/@comment-61022-20181218210016

Koavf wrote: Thanks for this, and thanks for Annabell for directing me here. Re: Marvel_Database:Layout_Guide, we have several instances where appearances are "Throng of unnamed bystanders". 1.) I think this is totally useless (virtually every comic book has someone's knee cap in the background of a panel), 2.) it doesn't actually say who appears just that someone or something appears, and 3.) we should explicitly say on this page that appearances are just for individuals with some kind of identification: be it a clearly-identifiable member of an alien race or someone whose job can be inferred from his clothing and is relevant to the story (e.g. a member of AIM--something that could be linked) or who has a name. Writing that passersby appear in a Spider-Man comic book is in no way helpful and doesn't meet the purpose of this section which is to identify and to mark for appearances.

I very much agree with this. There are a lot of things that are added to the appearance section that is useless clutter. I 'especially hate when a group (NYPD, AIM, whatever) is followed with ** Various unnamed members it a junk edit. If there is the name of an organization and no names underneath it, common sense would dictate that there are no identifiable members in that story.

Another thing that really bothers me is when an organization is added when there are fewer than three members present. Just because J. Jonah Jameson appears in a story, it doesn't mean that it is also an appearance of the Daily Bugle staff. A lot of story just feature Jonah and no other Bugle staff members.

Conversely, where a team is listed on the appearance hierarchy needs to be defined. If it's not a team book, or if the team book focuses primarily on one character, where the team appears in the hierarchy should be better defined.

While the group is present, different members of said team fall under different points of importance. They could be a featured character, supporting characters or other. The X-Men are a perfect example. Daily Bugle staff, SHIELD agents, etc. are lesser examples

Where a character gets placed should matter entirely on that character's involvement in a story. Later X-Men stories where there are dozens of X-Men this is important (Think the New X-Men era and beyond)

There are X-Men that fall under feature characters (involved in the main conflict), supporting characters (involved in a subplot), and other (cameo appearances).

As said, citing a team as appearing should require the group having more than two characters present. I think while each individual should be listed once in the appearance section, a team could be listed up to four times depending on the number of characters from that team appear and where they stand in relation to the hierarchy of the story.

Theoretical Example:

An X-Men comic book where the Original X-Men battle a team of rogue X-Men. There is a subplot involving a team of X-Men led by Charles Xavier. Also, four X-Men appear in the background that are not involved in anything that happens in the story. In this theoretical example, these are not different factions of X-Men, these X-Men are all otherwise considered part of the same exact team.

It would look like this: Featured Characters Supporting Characters: Antagonists: Other Characters:
 * X-Men
 * Cyclops
 * Beast
 * Angel
 * Phoenix
 * Iceman
 * X-Men
 * Professor X
 * Rogue
 * Storm
 * Nightcrawler
 * X-Men
 * Wolverine
 * Colossus
 * Havok
 * Sunfire
 * X-Men
 * Magneto
 * Kitty Pryde
 * Dazzler
 * Psylocke

Using the above example, if there are less than three characters in any of these sections "X-Men" would not be listed as a team.