Wikipedia:WikiProject Comics/Peer review/2007

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This Comics WikiProject page is an archive, log collection, or currently inactive page; it is kept primarily for historical interest.

Contents

[edit] Michigan_State_University_Libraries#Comic_Art_Collection

Michigan_State_University_Libraries#Comic_Art_Collection The reason for nominating the section: I would only ask that the part of the article relating to comic books be looked at, it is vary short and would not take much time, I feel it is of some value to the comic book information on Wikipedia. I am just looking to improve this section and wanted to get some ideas, and this looked like a knowlegable place to do that, Thanks Max ╦╩ 16:08, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Markeer

This seems to be a valuable subsection of its overall article. I respect the inclusion, and that for the most part it is kept compact and avoids unnecessary hyperbole. That said from a grammatical standpoint it tends toward choppy sentences and phrases, currently buries the lead, and needs some changes and additions to its citations in my opinion.

A few notes/comments:

  • Regarding burying the lead: '"More than 150,000 comic books published in the United States since 1935 are included in this collection, which is the largest cataloged library collection of comic books."' - If this were a stand-alone stub, this sentence would be the assertion of notability. I'd suggest moving it to the first paragraph, preferably right after the introductory sentence.
  • The footnote on the sentence about students and scholars traveling to it "to be the primary library resource..." etc. has a citation that leads to the collection's home page, meaning this is a vague statement of intent, not an objective truth.
  • In fact it looks as if every one of the 6 footnotes in this section lead to the university's website rather than to a secondary source. I would say remove them all except one link as a primary-source evidence of the collection's existence, and keep the aforementioned link to the site's assertion of being the largest collection in the world. That latter would be far stronger if asserted by a secondary source, but by citing that page at least that assertion of notability is being made by the university instead of by a wikipedia editor.
  • Avoid passive voice. For example where you say "The major focus of the collection is on" you could easily substitute "The collection focuses on..." which is tighter and stronger.
  • Please shorten up the sentence regarding microfiche availability. It's useful to know it exists, but "Cooperation with commercial firms" for instance is unnecessary info. All scanning is done by someone somewhere. How the process arrives at a frankly common media type isn't particularly important for a university library page.

Most of those comments are simply suggestions or nitpicks, although I do think the citations should be re-examined with the wikipedia guidelines in mind. A very informative addition to its article. I had been unaware of this collection and I'm happy to have learned something about it. -Markeer 21:17, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Ultimate X-Men (story arcs)‎

This article was nominated for AfD in December, so another user and I decided to fix it. We took it from this to this since then. It's currently rated as B with a Mid importance. I would like to get it to A status. - Peregrine Fisher

[edit] J Greb

My immediate thoughts:

  • I'm not thrilled about the TOC setup, it looks more like a nav-box, and a hard to read on at that.
The normal TOC is quite long now. Do other TOC templates exist, or should we change the story arc headers to "====" ? - fmmarianicolon | Talk 18:38, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
I could make one that looks like the TOC at the top of List of One Piece episodes, also. - Peregrine Fisher 18:50, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
I don't really have problems with long ToCs since they are 1) there for ease of navigation (find it, jump to that section) and 2) collapsible (hide it and scroll). If it really needs to be brought down in length, I'd go with casting it as columns of text, not as a table. Either way though is going to force additional editing as new arcs are included. — J Greb 19:33, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
  • "Era" in this context is way to pretentious. "Tenure" or "Run" fit better. I'd lean towards "Tenure" since "Run" could be seen as a bit jargon-y.

Looking through the page:

  • Consistency is needed in the arc/story titling. I'd go with the arc titles and story titles for stand alone issues, such as the Annuals.
  • Moving the magazine information out of the headers. Just have the titles there.
  • Changing the "Published between/Published" line to "Originally published as/in" with the magazine title(s) and issue(s) followed by the cover/indencia dates. Example:
    From
    Return to Weapon X (#7-12)
    Published between: August 2001 - January 2002
    To
    Return to Weapon X
    Originally published in: Ultimate X-Men #7-12 (August 2001 - January 2002)
  • Consistency in dates. Ultimate War looks out of place unless the indencia or cover has the "Month Day, Year" information. If these are the ship dates pulled from a source, it needs to be cited and the others brought into line. If it's "when my LCS got them" it needs to be changed to the cover date. Personal preference is to use the cover date and only reference ship dates if there was a publishing delay. (Green Lantern vol 4 would be a good example of this, the cover dates don't mach the ship dates. Ship dates are supported by the "DC Nation" page that ran in the particular issues.)

Other thoughts:

  • I like how you've trimmed the synopses down to the minimum.
  • It would be a fair idea to include industry awards nominated and won by a particular issue or arc. This is a notable item and something that should be easily cited.
  • Ref links that would be worth adding (All are Grand Comics Database Project):
    • www.comics.org/series.lasso?SeriesID=7826 (Ultimate X-Men)
    • www.comics.org/series.lasso?SeriesID=18994 (Ultimate X-Men Annual)
    • www.comics.org/series.lasso?SeriesID=11056 (Ultimate War)

Last thing, while I'm leery about having these type of articles since it is way too easy to abuse, this article now looks like a good example of what series warrant it (notability and arc driven) and what should be there.

- J Greb 02:13, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

J Greb, thanks for your detailed review! I've applied your "Originally published as/in" suggestion. It's a good suggestion, I like how the story arc titles look with the issue numbers moved down next to the dates. A question on using "Tenure" for the writer section titles: would "Tenure of Robert Kirkman" or "Robert Kirkman's Tenure" be better? - fmmarianicolon | Talk 08:25, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
I'd go with "Writer's tenure". It may be more informal, but from my experience, what's to the left side is what's picked up easiest. The writers name should be there as it is what a reader will be looking for. — J Greb 19:33, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Seraphimblade

To start with-WOW, if this doesn't look a thousand times better then the last time I saw it! Good work to everyone who did it. That being said, of course, there's always a few things.
  • Some of the plot sections don't provide much context. As an example (from "Date Night"): "Piotr and Kurt visit a comatose Alison, and Kurt is sad because she chose Angel over him." A comatose person chose someone over someone else? This might make sense to a reader of the series, but to me it makes not a bit. Of course, it's good not to have them overlong, but if something would require too much explaining to make sense, it may be best just to leave it out.
  • In many of the sections, the "Notes" section seems to be just an extension of the plot outline, and recounts in-universe events. In others, it gives some out-of-universe information about the particular issue or issues. I think it would be better and clearer if "in-universe" stays in the plot section, and "Notes" deals only with out-of-universe aspects of the issue.
  • Some of the plot summaries seem to be rather choppy-"This happened. That happened. Something else happened." Generally, there are contextual transitions that can be used in these cases, and sometimes combined into one sentence. "While X was in New York, pursuing his old nemesis, Y was in Chicago, beginning construction on the secret superweapon. After X returns to Boston, he meets up with Z, who..." and so on.

Overall though, it's coming along very well, I'm very impressed! Seraphimblade Talk to me 06:47, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Apostrophe

The infobox-like listing needs to be completely replaced with prose.

For example:

"The Tomorrow People" is the first arc of Ultimate X-Men; it was written by Mark Millar [This phrase might be redundant due to the fact that the article does sections by writers, though.] and is told in Ultimate X-Men #1-6, published in February 2001 - July 2001. Brothers Adam Kubert and Andy Kubert were planned to draw the arc to ensure a monthly release schedule, but Adam was unable to draw the last two issues, due to commitments to Origin; only Andy Kubert illustrates #5 and #6. The first issue sold out, with the fourth and fifth issues selling more than 100,000 copies each in United States comic book stores.

In "The Tomorrow People", the government starts building and releasing Sentinels to hunt mutants after the Brotherhood of Mutant Supremacy declares war against humans. Professor Charles Xavier unites a group of teenage mutants to form the X-Men so they can stop the Brotherhood. Millar immediately establishes differences between the mainstream and Ultimate continuities by reinventing the pasts and motives of several characters. For example, Jean Grey recruits Colossus after a nuclear arms deal goes bad while Wolverine joins the team with the ulterior motive of assassinating Professor Xavier. Some themes remain the same, however, such as the love triangle between Wolverine, Jean Grey and Cyclops. This arc introduces many Ultimate versions of the characters, including Colossus, Cyclops, Beast, Storm, Iceman, Jean Grey Wolverine, Magneto, Quicksilver, Scarlet Witch, and the Sentinels.

Something across those lines. ' 07:39, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

I can do that, but it will kind of conflict with some of the advice above. What do people think? - Peregrine Fisher 18:07, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
I agree this the information can be converted to prose for the most part, but I'm worried about starting each section with

"(Story Arc) is told in Ultimate X-Men #(x-y), pubished between (StartMonth) - (FinalMonth)."

I cannot think of a different way to state it for 20 arcs. Should we leave just the publication line seperate from the prose? - fmmarianicolon | Talk 18:36, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
Unfortunately I think converting each arc section to prose would be back sliding. Right now, IIUC, the "Plot outline" is the only section that by the various MOS should be in present tense. The rest should be "past tense". Lumping everything into the same prose section will create a conflict.
As for "...a different way to state it..." I think that's a bad way to approach it. The arc sections should be as consistent as possible, the main intent should be to get the information clearly across. — J Greb 19:43, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] WildC.A.T.s/X-Men

I'd appreciate any advice, suggestions, or constructive criticisms that can be given. Thanks! Willbyr (talk | contribs) 18:15, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Auto review

The following suggestions were generated by a semi-automatic javascript program, and might not be applicable for the article in question.

You may wish to browse through User:AndyZ/Suggestions for further ideas. Thanks, Hiding Talk 15:05, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Hiding

It's not really laid out in an established format, I think it needs bringing in line with a typical article. Definitely needs to cite references, and needs to be better grounded in an out of universe perspective. Needs more work on the publication side, any sources on creator's opinions of the series, press about the cross over, remember, Image was the company created by creators who split from Marvel, it's quite something that they then produced an inter company crossover. Hiding Talk 19:25, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Omega The Unknown

While I am aware that this article largely concerns a somewhat obscure (arguably trivial) comics character/title from the 1970s, I created it back in March of 2006 after the announcement that Jonathan Lethem would be reviving the character, and I recently updated it as the current projection for the new book is for 2007. While it is always possible that the revival project may not happen, crossover works in comics by notable "non-comics" authors in recent years have garnered a great deal of attention, and my goal had been to have a solid article (at least "B" rated, preferably "A") on the theory that if Letham's project goes forward as announced, we would all benefit from having a decent core article on the original series to work from.

Recently I've spent some time adding citations for a number of assertions that have been added to the article in the past year (and removed a copyvio passage), but much of the original synopsis text is unchanged and I believe I'm a bit too close to the subject to judge how it would read to a casual (or completely new) reader.

I'm requesting Peer Review, but if I haven't made this clear enough: I don't have any illusions that this article has potential to be Featured or anything, and probably not even GA rank for at least a year, since the largest degree of notability it could obtain would be if and when Letham's series is completed. That said, if a couple of WP:COMICS editors could take a glance at it and make any suggestions to improve it, it's possible we might all thank ourselves someday. -Markeer 13:01, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Auto review

The following suggestions were generated by a semi-automatic javascript program, and might not be applicable for the article in question.

  • Please expand the lead to conform with guidelines at Wikipedia:Lead. The article should have an appropriate number of paragraphs as is shown on WP:LEAD, and should adequately summarize the article.[?]
  • Per Wikipedia:Context and Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates), months and days of the week generally should not be linked. Years, decades, and centuries can be linked if they provide context for the article.[?]
  • This article is a bit too short, and therefore may not be as comprehensive as WP:WIAFA critera 1(b) is looking for. Please see if anything can be expanded upon.[?]
  • Avoid using contractions like (outside of quotations): wasn't.
  • As done in WP:FOOTNOTE, footnotes usually are located right after a punctuation mark (as recommended by the CMS, but not mandatory), such that there is no space in between. For example, the sun is larger than the moon [2]. is usually written as the sun is larger than the moon.[2][?]
  • Please ensure that the article has gone through a thorough copyediting so that it exemplifies some of Wikipedia's best work. See also User:Tony1/How to satisfy Criterion 1a.[?]

You may wish to browse through User:AndyZ/Suggestions for further ideas. Thanks, Hiding Talk 15:03, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Hiding

It's a good start, but I'd like to see more details about the creative teams thoughts on the character and the creation process. It'd be nice to see what Gerber was thinking. I'm also wary the article is used as an advert and "bring you up to speed" for the new series. Hiding Talk 19:21, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Willy Vandersteen

I've just expanded this article considerably, using one major source and a few other ones to back things up a bit. I'm wondering if it is any good now (content, style, language, ...), and what would be needed to bring it to GA-status. Fram 09:37, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

Article is quite good. A few more links to other articles, if they exist, might be useful. It'd be great if some of the red links could be removed as well or having articles on the subjects created. And if it would be possible to get some of the "Biografie" citations supported by some other source as well, that would be useful. Too much seemingly exclusive reliance on one source isn't something that's generally encouraged. But I'm more used to doing A-Class Biography review than general GA-Class review anyway, so many of these comments might not necessarily apply to GA status anyway. Those are the only real potential problems I see, though. John Carter 14:51, 29 October 2007 (UTC)
Thanks. Since it passed GA and is not fit for FA by far, I'll delist this peer review for now and perhaps relist it if and when I think of running it for FA. More sources are definitely needed... Fram 15:35, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Valérian: Spatio-Temporal Agent

This article seems at a point (largely from the efforts of Joe King) where it feels right to push for a GA nomination, and it would be nice to get a last round of "fresh eye" community polish input. MURGH disc. 13:29, 14 April 2007 (UTC)