Thread:Nausiated/@comment-1713281-20120708001811/@comment-61022-20120709220919

Well, I'm getting into the Atlas Era stuff myself and it's heavily western orientated before the mid 50's when it got into horror/sci-fi stuff that was popular at the time. I was going to go in and create/update profiles for d-list western heroes, because I would not be surprised if Marvel tries to revive them like they did with their d-list wartime super-heroes (Ala the Marvels Project and the Twelve). I haven't taken a look but I would not be surprised if some of them crop in that new western series (Rawhide Kid: The Sensational Kid) Some of the Timely/Atlas Era Western heroes that are more obscure have made some brief reappearances in recent times (Arizona Annie and the first western hero the Masked Raider in particular)

All-in-all it's all really subjective on what you consider noteworthy, or considered cannon.

I would hazard a guess that any of Marvel's original western heroes would be considered part of Earth-616 cannon, they're easier to identify and "fit" into continuity than the more far-out sci-fi and horror stories (I'd say that most of the "age of monsters" stuff would only be considered cannon around the time Atlas started publishing Tales to Astonish, Tales of Suspense and Journey into Mystery as those were the only titles to have monsters from the 50's era appear in the modern age.)

On the other hand, western heroes.. I'd think the only ones that wouldn't be considered "cannon" would be the books based on actors who played in a lot of westerns (There were a bunch of titles based on those) or the humour stuff like Annie Oakley, and probably the Wyatt Earp series as well... Although I suppose you could make an argument that Wyatt Earp (being a historical character and all) would have some validity in being added into the Marvel Universe proper since most of its past history mirrors the real world.

As for the war titles, I'd say that stories like Battle, and Battlefield are probably not cannon because they're just general war stories. But I'd say that stuff like Combat Kelly is cannon (since Marvel briefly revived him in the 70's in the series Combat Kelly and the Leatherneck Raiders) and probably Combat Casey as well. Not a whole lot of character specific war titles until Sgt. Fury in the 60s so at least that saves some picking through.

As for Nazis.. Yeah I mostly stuck to characters who appeared in super-hero books, especially if they were unique in some way. The majority of all villains during the Golden Age were mostly one-off characters who usually died by the end of the story, but my stand point is that even a one-off character could have enough merit to have a profile done up of them. Not only just in the sense that they're unique on their own, but if there is some sort of "sign of the times" quality to them, for example a lot of the Imperial Japanese villains that I've done profiles for were depicted in a highly racist manner (at least by today's standard) that was considered socially acceptable in the past (Especially when it came to characters from the Young Allies, ye gads, sometimes those were hard reads) But they speak of a different time and what people considered politically correct or not. World War II was a funny time, especially after Pearl Harbour, a lot of anger toward the Japanese after the attacks there in 1941 were pretty much laid out on the printed page.

Another kind of deciding factor I go by is exactly how much is there to go by with the character. Is there an interesting back story? You can learn so much about a character based on how much characterization is is put into them, even if it's just one issue.

On the subject of "not important", one example I can give was someone was going in and creating profiles for random Stark Enterprise employees who might have appeared in one panel and was named and sent to do one task to never be seen again. (I don't know if these are still on the wiki) but the profile basically read "Bob is an employee at Stark Enterprises and cleaned up after the Melter attacks" and that was about it. I mean, perhaps naming all the employees on the Stark Industries page would be an interesting addition (or at least creating a sub-page for all the employees) but creating an entire profile for a random nobody in that appears only in one panel is kind of silly.

Anyhow, I say go for it, I mean what's the harm? It's work that will appeal to only a small group of people with probably a passing interest, but my opinion has always been that an encyclopaedia should always be as complete as possible, and there are plenty of interesting characters that are obscure and mostly forgotten, so I say go for it.