Talk:Pride & Joy (comics)/GA1

GA Review

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Hi, I will be reviewing this article, and doing some cleanup at the article as well.

Here are the issues I've noticed on my first quick glance through:

• Overlinking—dates are generally not linked unless important.
• I don't know a lot about the sources here, but it looks like there are a lot of primary sources, which is generally frowned upon at GA. Here are the sources that I am wary of (from my first glance through the article):
  • Review of Runaways Vol. 1: Pride & Joy RPGnet. Retrieved October 18, 2008. : I'm not familiar with rpg.net and what kind of site it is and how widely read it is. I did just notice that the author's name is listed, which is good; at first I thought there was no author listed.
  • All of the Merging Minds sources look like primary sources to me. (Correct me if I'm wrong about that.)
  • Erika Szabo (2008-09-29). "Runaways Vol. 1: Pride & Joy Review". Digg. Retrieved 2008-10-12. : doesn't seem very notable, it's a small posting with no comments. (As far as I can tell, at least.)
  • "CBEM Archive 2006". 2006-01-27. p. 1. Retrieved 2008-10-24. : What kind of publication is this? Is it possible to cite the issue itself, instead of this archive? Even if the issue is not easily available online, citing an offline source would probably look better than citing this (since it's an AOL homepage; most reviewers do not have a good first reaction when they see the link take them to something like that.)

Don't let the primary source thing get you down too much; it seems to be a difficult problem to get around for comics in general, since they are not reviewed as widely in mainstream sources as most other forms of literature are. I had to clean up a similar primary source problem in my own comics article when I nominated it for GA a few weeks ago. Basically we just need to establish which of the sources you have are reliable, and cite them as much as possible, citing the primary sources less (for example, rather than citing a primary source to say something about the setting, you can cite a third-party review saying that, and then it's much more robust, because it's a reliable reviewer drawing that inference, rather than a Wikipedia editor drawing that inference); and, of course, in the meantime, keep looking for more good sources.

• Characters section: might help to have a brief description of each character. See Gunnerkrigg Court#Main characters for an example of how I handled that in my recent GA review.
  • You can use information from the Plot section...the list of characters' superpowers should probably be included in this section, instead of that one.
• General cleanup of writing style is needed; that's something I can take care of pretty easily.
• The Plot section ends rather abruptly...could you add a sentence or two describing how it ties into the later parts of the story (ie, what will be happening in the rest of the story, and how Pride & Joy set the story up for that)?
  • As mentioned above, the list of superpowers should probably be moved from this section into the Characters section.
• Setting section doesn't really tell me anything about the setting; it's basically a list of references to the real world and/or pop culture. I think this list could be done away with and replaced with a sentence or two (i.e. "In order to show the readers the similarities between the real world and the world in which the comic takes place, Vaugh makes frequent references to real-world people and events, such as _____ and _____.") Then you could go on to actually describe the setting of the comic...what is the "Marvel Universe version of Los Angeles" that you mentioned earlier? If it's something that is common to many Marvel comics and already had its own article somewhere, the you can use the template {{main|ARTICLE}} to link to whatever that article is, and then just give a summary here. If it's not, then you should write a good description of the setting (unless the setting is unimportant, or almost the same as the real world, in which case the whole section could just be scrapped and the one or two sentences I mentioned above could be relocated somewhere else).
• In the Production section, the sentence "Runaways launched in 2003 as a part of Marvel's Tsunami imprint, the goal of which was to attract new readers, particularly the younger audience.[12] Mainly to win fans from the growing cult of Japanese Manga readers. The imprint soon failed, and and Runaways became one of the very few series to actually continue on, due to its high quality, rabid fans,[13] and the way it continued to boom on sales" is, for me, uncomfortable similar to the wording in the Barnes & Noble source given. That sentence needs some cleanup anyway because of general writing style issues, but I would also be sure to make it not appear like plagiarism.
• The sentence "In the third issue, Gert's line of "Well, Siegfried and Roy have white tigers in their (basement)"[8] was highly publicized for an event that happened after. Shortly after this issue came out, Roy was attacked by a tiger.[15]" – what does that have to do with production?
• Reception section: have there been any negative reviews of P&J anywhere? Anything bad anyone's said about it? If so, it will make that section look better—it's always nice to have two opinions represented in that kind of section, even if there's not much to say about the one opinion (ie, if hardly anyone has said anything bad about the comic).

That's my thoughts for now. I think the most crucial things to work on are dealing with the sources, improving (or eliminating) the Setting section, and make changes to the Plot section and intro to show clearly why P&J is important to the series as a whole (ie, how it set up the storyline, and how in the real world it generated interest in the story, etc.). —Politizer ^talk/_contribs 02:00, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Thanks a lot! I'm already working on everything you say, so it becomes perfect. A _talk 19:32, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

No problem! I'm interested to see what happens. To be honest, I think the breadth of information that can be added is fundamentally limited, as it's only a small part of a much bigger series, but it will still be good to see what we can find to flesh out the article a little more. I won't do the "official" review until we've finished cleaning up the article some more; whatever happens here, though, I definitely think it would be a good idea for you to turn your attention to the parent article, Runaways, once this is done, since that article has a lot of information and probably has good potential to make GA. —Politizer ^talk/_contribs 19:43, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Of course ;) I've added yet another source where Joss Whedon talks about Runaways' main concept (briefly); I guarantee the source (Newsarama) is 100% legit, it simply had been archived for a forum-format so users could respond. I've added slight production information about a character. Should I merge the criticism section with reception? What do you expect to find in the settings section? I'll chop the cultural references to how you suggested it (it was also suggested by a user who peer reviewed the article). I truly appreciate all your help! Yours sincerely, A _talk 21:50, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

As for the AOL source, I'm removing it. Comic Book Resources has published an article (relating to Runaways' win of the Top Library) but it was changed, so I've only managed to find its cached version from Google and the complete list of winners. Which would you recommend?

I would say just cite them both; the complete list first (to verify that it got the award) and the citation info for the CBR article (to add a bit of notability just by having an extra ref there). You don't need to have a website given for the CBR article if you have sufficient date and authorship info to give (you can just give title, publisher, date, accessdate, and author if there is an author listed, and that should be enough...I'm not too familiar with {{cite}} templates other than {{cite web}}, but I think {{cite news}} doesn't require a URL), and keep the URL in the article with a hidden comment (using <!-- URL -->) in case other editors want to be able to verify. —Politizer ^talk/_contribs 19:23, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks! I've made the exact setting clear. "Runaways is set in the Marvel Universe, the main string of story lines that ties Marvel's canonical series. However, unlike most series (which are often set in New York City), Runaways is set in Los Angeles, an unexplored area of the Marvel Universe.[18]" Should I add more? Or is it perfect the way it is? Quite honestly, you have no idea how grateful I am of your help. A _talk 19:55, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

That looks pretty good to me; I think all that still needs to be done with that section is to collapse the list of examples of real-world people and events that are mentioned in the comic. It should probably be shrunk into a single sentence (something along the lines of "in order to ___________, Vaughan makes frequent references to real-world people and events"); from there, you could either pick two or three examples that you think are the most important, or you could include the entire list but as a footnote (ie, "Vaughan makes frequent references to real-world people and events.<ref>For example, things referred to in the series include A, B, C, X, Y, and Z.</ref>"). The choice is up to you. —Politizer ^talk/_contribs 20:04, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Collapsed! I've only included three references I've assumed most people would be able to understand at a first glance. A _talk 20:17, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

(unindent) I am copying here some comments I made at A's talk page:

• we just have to figure out how much room there is for development in this article. The way it is now, I don't think I can pass it for GA, but we're not in any real hurry to do the formal decision now; the main issue is whether there is enough stuff to write about for it to ever make GA. Since it's just part of a larger story, that makes things difficult...although this comic seems to be more unique in that it was originally intended as a stand-alone story, so there may be enough to say about it to flesh out the article enough for GA. (A lot of that will probably depend on whether or not it got reviewed a lot before it expanded into Runaways. Right now, a lot of the awards and praise seem to be for the Runaways series as a whole, rather than "Pride & Joy" in particular; if there's a lot of stuff out there that talks just about "Pride & Joy" and how important that was, that would help make this article more independent and notable.)

There are also a few other remaining issues (not necessarily "problems," just areas that still need to be improved) with the article,:

• Second paragraph of Production is very detailed and possibly trivial information on differences between original character concepts and actual character realizations; much of it could be summarized in a single sentence (mentioning that there were many differences between the specifics of the original concepts and the final results of the characters when the comic was finally made).
• Plot section is mostly geared towards describing the powers that each character gets (information which is currently duplicated in the Characters section, and should probably be removed from here anyway) rather than the other events of the storyline...I haven't read the comic so I can't be sure yet, but it seems to me like the section could be a bit more descriptive.

For those reasons as well as other general cleanup, I don't think this article can quite meet the GA requirements at this time. I am going to update the article's WikiProject Comics rating to B (from Start), which is one level below GA. After that, I will try to continue working on improving this article (maybe I can also try to get my hands on the comic) and once some of these issues have been cleared up we can try nominating it again. In the meantime I also highly recommend that you keep working on the Runaways article, as I think it could pretty easily reach GA, given that it is the parent of this article.

Final GA review (see here for criteria)

1. It is reasonably well written.

   a (prose): Can still use cleanup b (MoS): Can still use cleanup

2. It is factually accurate and verifiable.

   a (references): Adequate referencing is provided b (citations to reliable sources): Has a good number of reliable sources. c (OR): Writen from a neutral point of view, information is verifiable

3. It is broad in its coverage.

   a (major aspects): Provides mostly adequate context, although could use a bit more information on its impace on the series b (focused): Generally remains focused, although there is some confusion sometimes over whether awards/reception/etc. is more directed specifically towards "Pride & Joy" or generally towards Runaways

4. It follows the neutral point of view policy.

   Fair representation without bias: Written in a neural tone

5. It is stable.

   No edit wars etc.:

6. It is illustrated by images, where possible and appropriate.

   a (images are tagged and non-free images have fair use rationales): Has infobox image b (appropriate use with suitable captions):

7. Overall:

   Pass/Fail:

—Politizer ^talk/_contribs 01:02, 6 November 2008 (UTC)