Wikipedia:WikiProject Comics/Peer review/Ultimate X-Men (story arcs)

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

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.

• I changed it to a normal TOC. - Peregrine Fisher 18:02, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

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)

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)

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)