Talk:Iron Man/GA1

GA Review

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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Reviewer: Chiswick Chap (talk · contribs) 16:55, 6 September 2023 (UTC)

I'll do this one. Chiswick Chap (talk) 16:55, 6 September 2023 (UTC)

Comments

Firstly, congratulations on taking this from a 180,000 byte indisciplined hulk to a lithe 67,000 byte machine in a few days: a transformation as remarkable as anything in any comic book.

• The publication history and characterization are admirably comprehensive. I'm unclear why "Armor" should not be treated as one of the "themes and motifs", since, while obviously important, it is clearly both a running theme and an Iron Man motif. Perhaps it would make sense to promote "Themes and motifs" to be a top-level chapter, with subsections for "Politics", "Technology", and "Armor", or something along those lines.
  • The thought process here is that it was originally a section for "powers, abilities, and equipment" or something like that as is often included in superhero articles. The abilities section was mostly about his personality and role as a businessman, so that type of info was better suited for characterization. Then his only "powers" were tied to the armor, which just made it one "armor" section. I could definitely see it going under themes if you think that's a better spot for it. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 19:12, 6 September 2023 (UTC)
    • Yes please.
      • Done. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 00:55, 8 September 2023 (UTC)
• The heading "Personality and motivations" is interesting, well-written, and well-sourced, and in a way it does tie into 20th century technological progress and politics, so it isn't just an in-universe view. But what I am not seeing much of in the article is a discussion of the Iron Man imagery and symbolism (I don't just mean the graphics) and its place in society, pace the very brief paragraph on "Cultural impact and legacy": in other words, the view from outside. Obvious concerns to the ignorant outsider would be issues of sexism, racism, and American nationalism; and even the question of Iron Man's impact on the Superhero (and his place in the American monomyth?) does not get much coverage: in every case, depending on the available sources.
  • I feel like personality and themes generally cover these aspects of his character. I tried to find more sources about the influence of the character on fiction, but those were harder to come by. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 19:12, 6 September 2023 (UTC)
    • This is prima facie surprising, but it may be that the discussions are of action heroes more generally, so that it would be a part/whole error to rely on those discussions in this specific context.
      • Yeah, this is more or less what I found. It's easy to find coverage of Marvel heroes in general, especially in relation to their film appearances, but a bit harder to separate out specific individual characters without inserting hints of original research and interpretation. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 17:38, 7 September 2023 (UTC)

Small details

• In the "Armor" section, "Extremis" is sometimes in italics, sometimes not. Is there a reason for this?
  • The title of the story is italicized, the fictional virus is not. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 19:12, 6 September 2023 (UTC)
• "James Rhodes", "Franklin Richards", "Radicalism", "Sean Chen", and "Gerry Duggan" all link to dab pages.
  • Fixed. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 19:12, 6 September 2023 (UTC)

• One small thing: the "Abilities" list in the Infobox is a bulleted list at 2 levels. All the other lists in the infobox are plain lists using <br/>, which causes less indentation. Perhaps the first level of the "Abilities" list might use the unbulleted format.
  • I've cleaned up the infobox by using Template:ubl and trimming minor details. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 17:36, 7 September 2023 (UTC)

Images

• The artwork images have NFUR licenses. The NFURs for the two Tales of Suspense images seem very abbreviated; I'm not an expert on such things but it does look as if they might be challenged.
  • Fixed. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 19:12, 6 September 2023 (UTC)
• The Downey photograph appears to be correctly licensed on Commons.

• The Bleeding Edge Armor image would be worth making a little wider as the individual frames are quite small.
  • Fixed. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 19:12, 6 September 2023 (UTC)

Sources

• I am not well placed to undertake a source review for this article, but it certainly looks well-cited. The spot-checks I tried all worked out fine.

Summary

• This is a fine article, interesting, authoritative, and informative.

Extended content

Still, I feel that it would be much improved by a scholarly and critical view "from outside", a discussion of the sociological aspects of Iron Man; and indeed it could fairly be argued that this is essential, one of the main points about the character. I look forward to seeing a section on this, and to seeing the article at GA. Chiswick Chap (talk) 17:44, 6 September 2023 (UTC) Chiswick Chap, I'm not sure what specifically I should be looking for here. The personality of the character and the themes that the character is used to explore are both already covered. Is there a significant omission in those? I've addressed all other points above. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 19:12, 6 September 2023 (UTC) Thought I'd been very plain. Well, the article needs to cover discussion of the character's cultural, sociological and political implications, as I indicated with named links to lists if sources on the aspects that sprang to mind and are confirmed by the numerous sources there. Chiswick Chap (talk) 20:11, 6 September 2023 (UTC) My understanding of "cultural, sociological and political implications" is what's written in the second paragraph of "personality and motivations", the first paragraph of "themes and motifs", and the paragraph under "cultural impact and legacy". Are we using different definitions? Thebiguglyalien (talk) 20:40, 6 September 2023 (UTC) We are drifting away from consensus here, not towards it. What the article does not contain, in any quantity, is analysis of these things. Dr X stated in 19xx that Iron Man exemplified unthinking sexism, Prof Y in 19yy that it was racist, to which Marvel responded by changing him in 19mm by doing such-and-such, only for feminist F in 20ff to assert that this was just window-dressing and that Iron Man's armor represented A, B, and C, and politician P in 20pp to state that ... in short, a concise summary of the cut and thrust of debate, the positions taken, the dates, the scholarly reasons given, characters to which he's been compared. Chiswick Chap (talk) 00:58, 7 September 2023 (UTC) I disagree for a few reasons. First, I think you're overestimating the prominence of Iron Man related discourse in politics and academia, especially when we're considering comic book Iron Man as opposed to Downey's film portrayal. When Marvel made changes, it was generally a response to letters to the editor or to the general American political climate, both of which are mentioned in the article. Iron Man was not a well-known character until 2008, well after his character was modernized. Second, I'm generally skeptical of articles that use "Person X said [controversial opinion]" when Person X is not one of the main people involved with the topic. As far as I'm concerned, if it's a novel opinion from one random commentator that needs to be attributed in-text, then it probably doesn't warrant inclusion per WP:WEIGHT. And third, whether intentionally or not, it looks like you're asking for a thumb on the scale to favor a decidedly negative POV. It seems like we have very different ideas of what the article should look like. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 01:45, 7 September 2023 (UTC) I see we aren't going to agree here, so let's agree to differ. Chiswick Chap (talk) 07:35, 7 September 2023 (UTC)

Reflecting on the discussion, I'm concerned about your "negative POV" remark. You are of course right that neutrality and balance are required. However, Iron Man has certainly come in for some criticism along the lines I've indicated, and the article is at the moment unremittingly positive, which is unbalanced in the other direction. I do not favour "Criticism" sections, as inherently unbalanced, but the article does require at least a brief mention that people have made hostile comments about the superhero for multiple reasons. You can further balance this with a statement that Marvel have repeatedly adjusted the character to soften his image, or whatever. Chiswick Chap (talk) 09:05, 7 September 2023 (UTC)

I read over the article again, and I identified one point where there seemed to be an omission of negative coverage, so I added a couple sentences to the "cultural impact and legacy" section. If the article is written in a positive manner, then I'll gladly fix it if there's any point where I used laudatory language instead of neutral language. But I'm not going to use a POV to draw a source.

Thank you, that's certainly an improvement. Nobody is asking you to put the cart before the horse; there is ample reliable evidence that this superhero, like the rest, has attracted criticism from multiple directions at different times.

The article currently covers that he was created to be "unlikable", that his character was changed as a direct response to the anti-war movement, that the character's politics were debated in the letters to the editor column, that Marvel used him as a pro-American pro-capitalist propaganda piece, that his anti-communist politics were dropped in favor of generic liberalism to avoid political controversy, that he is associated with a playboy image that sometimes veered into "belligerence, negligence, and misogyny", that his role in Civil War was seen as villainous, and that early portrayals of Soviets and of the Mandarin in Iron Man comics were based in racist tropes. I included these because they're the points that are supported by a general search for sources without explicitly seeking out positive or negative coverage. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 17:35, 7 September 2023 (UTC)

Thank you for the explanation. I find the coverage uncomfortably close to unbalanced, not by lavish praise or actual denial but by smoothing out anything that might begin to sound negative with the briefest of mentions, while the positive aspects are covered in detail. "Seeking out [both] positive [and] negative coverage" could be described as a duty for any Wikipedia editor on any topic. But you are certainly correct that both sides are now touched upon, so I will say per the GA Criteria that "the main points" are now covered. Chiswick Chap (talk) 12:31, 9 September 2023 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.