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Talk:Southern Cross (wordless novel)/GA1

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Reviewer: J Milburn (talk · contribs) 21:08, 17 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Looks like a fascinating topic; I'm happy to offer a review. J Milburn (talk) 21:08, 17 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

  • The first paragraph of the lead is a little short. I also wonder whether "Polynesian island inhabitants" could link to Polynesia or Polynesians?
  • Do we definitely not know the sex of the child? How about "his or her"? I'm also unsure about the "death" of an environment.
  • "The only work he knew of the genre's prolific pioneer" This is a slightly strange phrase- a little too prosaic, I feel.
  • "Illustrator Rockwell Kent provided the introduction" What was in the introduction?
  • Is Jimbo worth a redlink? If it's notable, go for it- no harm in having redlinks.
  • Why is the second paragraph of the reception section in present tense?
  • While a search indicates that you may have exhausted the (accessible!) academic literature, I am finding some more bits in news archives. It seems to have been nominated for an award (if none of those sources are OK, let me know and I'll try to find a print one in the Nexis archive) and it seems to have been displayed in an art gallery (ditto about Nexis).
    • Thanks. Added. Curly Turkey (gobble) 01:55, 18 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
      • Perhaps a line in the publication history section about art galleries? J Milburn (talk) 17:21, 18 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
        • It's definitely something I'd like to include, but all I can see are press releases (and news sources reprinting th epress releases), which I don't think count RS. Also, it doesn't really explain the first question that popped into my head—why would the Burnaby Art Gallery and Art Gallery of Ontario have single prints on display? Did they tear them out of the books? Were individual prints from the book put on sale? I'd also love to find a good source that details the talks given at the Burnaby show (and the Doug Wright Awards)—apparently there's a story behind trying to find a publisher, but blogs and stuff only hint at it without actually telling the story. Curly Turkey (gobble) 23:15, 18 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Another source (I don't know if any bits will be useful, but anyways-

The Globe and Mail (Canada)

December 15, 2007 Saturday

We always knew politics was a comic affair; In the season's harvest of graphic novels, Nathalie Atkinson finds that the personal is political (and vice versa)

BYLINE: Nathalie Atkinson

SECTION: BOOK REVIEW; GRAPHICA: NATHALIE ATKINSON; Pg. D12

Graphic Witness, edited by George Walker (Firefly, 423 pages, $29.95), has four wordless stories told in wood carvings. Out of print for years, these stories - by Frans Masereel, Lynd Ward, Giacomo Patri and Laurence Hyde - belong to an early type of visual storytelling which, as Seth points out in his afterword, owes as much to silent film as to comics.

Earnest and largely political, this format had its heyday in the 1920s and '30s, usually dealing with the oppressed underclass. The one Canadian offering, Southern Cross, is from 1951, and while the concerns are different - Pacific island atom bomb tests - the earnestness remains. Great publishing minds think alike, and Drawn & Quarterly has published Southern Cross (255 pages, $27.95) in a beautiful facsimile edition, reproducing the 118 wood engravings in their original 4- by 3-inch format.

  • Another source, which may well be useful-

The Observer (England)

November 25, 2007

Review: BOOKS: The mating call of a Wessex girl...: GRAPHIC NOVELS: Posy Simmonds updates Hardy while Nick Abadzis is drawn to a high-flying dog

BYLINE: ROGER SABIN

SECTION: OBSERVER REVIEW BOOKS PAGES; Pg. 29

Another facet of the Cold War is covered in Laurence Hyde's Southern Cross: A Novel of the South Seas (Drawn & Quarterly £ 18.95, pp256) , a reprint of a woodcut novel from 1951 about the testing of an atomic bomb in the Bikini Atoll. In 118 painstakingly engraved and virtually wordless pages, the idyllic life of the Polynesian islanders is shattered as they are evacuated and then have to deal with the ecological consequences of the explosion. Alas, the thousands of hours of work that must have gone into the book were wasted on a well-meaning but facile piece of agit-prop. A pretty picture of a dying fish does not a convincing polemic make.

Hope this has been helpful. Really interesting topic, definitely worth writing about. (Images and spotchecks look fine). J Milburn (talk) 21:50, 17 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, I'm happy that this article is ready for GA status. I suspect there's not really enough material out there for FA status; perhaps there will be a few reviews and analyses tucked away in hard-to-access sources that you could dig up. In any case, the articles in great shape now, and makes for a good GA. J Milburn (talk) 11:10, 22 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I've placed it in the comics section of Wikipedia:Good articles/Language and literature. If you'd rather move it elsewhere, feel free. J Milburn (talk) 11:16, 22 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I think I'll just leave the wordless novel articles wherever they happen to get placed until someone with a strong opinion comes along and "fixes" them (likely never). Curly Turkey (gobble) 11:30, 22 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
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