Talk:Black Widow (Natasha Romanova)/GA1

GA Review

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Nominator: Thebiguglyalien (talk · contribs) 16:23, 13 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Reviewer: Wrangler1981 (talk · contribs) 17:05, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I feel I am qualified to review this article. I believe it meets all of the criteria demonstrably, and it should no question that it should receive Good Article status. The authors are clearly familiar with the necessary criteria and other Good Articles on this sort of topic, and they meet or exceed all of the requirements.

Writing: The article is well-written. I have read through it in its entirety three times, and have not found any grammatical or spelling errors. It is clear and engaging. I made one minor edit to a word I felt could be improved ("throughout" for "through".(
Accuracy: The article is very well-sourced. It had many textual references, that are all clearly indicated. I did not find any original research.
Completeness: I feel the article includes almost all the notable facts and published interpretations about this character. I have a few minor suggestions at the end of this review.
Neutrality: The points of controversy about the character have to do with the portrayal of women in comics (potential sexism) and the portrayal of Russians and the Soviet Union. The article gives relevant points of view on these questions and is honest about potential biases of the character's creators, as discussed in secondary literature.
Stability: Seems stable to me, with no edit wars.
Images: The images are relevant and have captions. They seem like clear instances of fair use to me, in line with similar examples in comparable articles.
Copyright violations: I don't see any, based on my ability to check up on the sources. They don't seem to be plagiarized. The sources all seem reliable to me, according to the standards of this type of topic.

A few suggestions for the future:
- 1) There is more secondary literature on Black Widow as she relates to Daredevil, in the book Daredevil and Psychology and the book The Devil is in the Details, which are both books about Daredevil. She appears as a significant supporting character in Kevin Smith's Daredevil story called Guardian Devil (1998), and one of the secondary sources suggests that it's implied that the two character resume their relationship in this story. In the current version of the article, this story is not mentioned (although her appearance in the subsequent Brian Michael Bendis storyline is, which is good).
- 2) One of the things that's notable about Black Widow is that she is one of the first Russian superheroes in Marvel Comics. It would be interesting to know more about previous Russian protagonists in American comic books, and how she is similar or different. Also, I know that in some of the more recent Black Widow stories there is more information about her origins, including the idea that she was handpicked by Stalin. It would be interesting to include this, but it would have to be covered in secondary literature.
- 3) Black Widow appears to be one of the first female superheroes for Marvel. Sue Richards, the Wasp, and Jean Grey are the only ones I can think of who precede her. It would be interesting to include more about this in a broader context of how female heroes are portrayed in this genre. Related: Black Widow is a "femme fatale" character. It would be interesting, here again, to explore how she embodies this archetype for the genre, what influenced the creators (the article alludes to James Bond but doesn't elaborate), and how this set a standard or a model for future similar characters, like Elektra.

I don't think any of these suggestions are required, though.

I think the article should be Approved as is.

Wrangler1981 Thanks for looking over the article, and thanks for the tips on new sources! Will definitely check those out. For posterity, could you name which sources you checked for accuracy/plagiarism? It's not a huge deal, but that's recently become a common practice since sourcing details are harder to check at a glance than copyediting. Also let me know if there are any parts that might be unclear, especially to someone not terribly familiar with the character. That's one I have trouble with sometimes. Otherwise, if you add User:Novem Linguae/Scripts/GANReviewTool to your account, it will create a menu at the top of this page that will complete most of the approval steps for you. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 18:46, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Ok - I'll do this in the next couple of days. Wrangler1981 (talk) 18:52, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

About the references I checked: I reviewed Wiedlack's "Ballerina with PTSD," Shutt's "Devil of a Time," and the the short Alstetter paragraph about the proposed TV series, which were easily linked in the article. I also checked the Wolk book, All the Marvels, and the Marvel Chronicle published by DK; I own both of these two books. I also checked several of the web sources, particularly the one from Polygon by Towers, which is referenced extensively in the article. Wrangler1981 (talk) 19:49, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I re-read the whole article with clarity in mind, as you asked. I tried to put myself in the mindset of someone who had never heard of this character. I think it flows nicely and makes sense, even in the biography section, which is always difficult for comic characters because they usually have convoluted backstories and constant dramatic adventures.

I only have two questions, about character type.

1) In the first paragraph, Black Widow is simply called a "character." Wouldn't it be accurate to call her a superhero? I understand that she was initially introduced as a villain, but she became a hero quickly and continued to be a hero, maybe with anti-heroic qualities, throughout her subsequent appearances. I'm sure there are many sources that generally refer to her as a superhero, as a member of the Avengers. Wouldn't it help the casual reader to specify that she is a superhero, from the outset?

2) The article only uses the identifying phrase "femme fatale" late in the page, under the "Communism and Russophobia" section, then again in "feminism and sexuality". She's in the list of Marvel femme fatales in reception, though. Doesn't this mean that the designation "femme fatale" should appear much earlier in the article, maybe in "Creation" or even in the intro paragraph? I found many web references that refer to her this way, and talk about how the character evolution complicates this archetype. I think the casual reader would understand the character much more quickly if it was specified right away that this is the character genre that provides context for the specific topic. Wrangler1981 (talk) 20:15, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]