Talk:Keith Giffen

Page contents not supported in other languages.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

What dispute of neutrality?[edit]

On the article's page, there is a statement that this article's neutrality is disputed, followed by a link to a talk page discussion on that point. Said link leads here, but there is no such discussion. Has the dispute been satisfactorily resolved and the discussion consequently removed? If so, that note should be removed as well. If it hasn't been resolved, where is the discussion? Ted Watson 19:15, 25 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The concern seems to be that the "Controversy" and "Writing" sections display a bias against Giffen and his work, although I don't why there hasn't been a discussion already. --Redeagle688 20:03, 9 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Let me get this straight--that was supposed to be an invitation to begin a discussion of an allegation that the article is lacking neutrality? It really doesn't say that at all. Ted Watson 20:14, 10 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
IIRC, it says that someone finds the article non-neutral and that this talk page is the place to comment on the matter. I guess no one feels strongly enough about the matter (which is after all largely subjective) to actually jump in and start a point. Luis Dantas 18:11, 20 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
It says, "Please see the discussion on the talk page." That definitely indicates that there is a discussion already in place. But, until I came along, there wasn't one, about that or anything else. Ted Watson 19:42, 25 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
For an example of such a note which does not indicate a discussion is already going on, see The Green Hornet. Ted Watson 20:02, 1 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I was the one that started the Controversy section and pointed out the article in Comics Journal that nearly cost Giffen's career. Apparently one fanboy had a lot of difficulty with that and kept editing, removing, and finding every which way to try and downplay Giffen's swiping. I think after many months we've come to some sort of consensus as he was forced to research and cite every point he was trying to make even though many of them are dubious, such as the claim that Giffen is in fact Munoz. I am not biased against Mr. Giffen and find his work an extreme breath of fresh air. He's one of the few artists and writers that break the fourth wall and don't pretend that they are not just creating comics. However, this was an important point in his career and I felt no article on him could be complete or unbiased without mentioning it. If you look at many bios of Mr Giffen around they rarely mention it, if only out of politeness or the sort of hype eschewed on young readers in order to sell funny papers (ie. such as Stan Lee taking credit for creating Captain America). It was no coincidence IMO that one of the top selling artists at DC suddenly stopped drawing after this incident. This would be like Paramount Pictures taking Eddie Murphy off the big screen in the mid-80's. I don't hate Keith Giffen, he is in fact one of my favourites. After the relative few changes in this articles since I and 207.236.161.42 went back and forth on it this particular reasoning for a lack of neutrality citation has probably ended. We seem to have reached a consensus on this section. Is anyone for removing it then? --75.6.138.88 02:50, 16 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Currently, there are three tags: Neutrality, Tone, and Unreferenced. I can't see any need for either of them, so I second your suggestion. I assume the Unreferenced tag was added by a bot that wasn't set to see references to off-line resources (such as the printed edition of Comics Journal). A ref in the form of a URL would prevent that happening again. MeteorMaker 06:45, 12 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Edit Summary Correction[edit]

I made a slight mistake in a previous edit summary, where I mentioned removing a paragraph. However, even though he was working with Wally Woods at the time, a decision by the former belongs in the Wally Woods article, not under the Controversies section of the Giffen article. -- g026r 21:20, 1 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

  • are we sure it was entirely the late Mr Wood's doing? I have a hard time believing that Mr Giffen wouldn't be a part of something like this. --75.6.138.88 02:48, 16 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Controversy section removed[edit]

This was all uncited and needed to be removed because of WP's policies on living persons. It didn't seem very important anyway, although I have never been much of a comic book fan and have never heard of Mr. Giffen before today. Steve Dufour 05:13, 25 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]


Sources are clearly given, and Keith Giffen is best known for this blatant rip-off of another artist's very distinctive style anyway. I have restored the section, minus the irrelevant part about Wallace Wood. MeteorMaker 17:26, 28 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

POV TAG[edit]

I'm doing POV tag cleanup. Whenever an POV tag is placed, it is necessary to also post a message in the discussion section stating clearly why it is thought the article does not comply with POV guidelines, and suggestions for how to improve it. This permits discussion and consensus among editors. This is a drive-by tag, which is discouraged in WP, and it shall be removed. Future tags should have discussion posted as to why the tag was placed, and how the topic might be improved. Better yet, edit the topic yourself with the improvements. This statement is not a judgement of content, it is only a cleanup of frivolously and/or arbitrarily placed tags. No discussion, no tag.Jjdon (talk) 18:46, 26 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

That's my pasted statement - as I see that this topic has a consensus that none of the tags belong, they're history, too.Jjdon (talk) 18:46, 26 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

One part of Controversy section removed[edit]

This statement was in the "Controversy" section: "Loyal Giffen fans defended him by arguing that Giffen had actually ghosted the Munoz work, with some of the most extreme maintaining that in fact Munoz was simply a Giffen pseudonym, prompting two different men, each claiming to be Munoz, to launch competing defamation lawsuits against both Giffen and his fans (James Branch, "Who Knows Munoz?", The Comic Book Companion, March 1987)." I have been involved with comics since the '80s and have never heard of this publication. There is a book called "The Overstreet Comic Book Companion," but it is published annually, not monthly, as this citation seems to indicate, and it's a simple comic book price guide in which an article on the Keith Giffen controversy would be highly unlikely to appear. I did a Google search and the only reference to James Branch's article are a handful of anonymous internet encyclopedia Keith Giffen biographies on other wikis which were all 100% copied word-for-word from this Wikipedia article. In addition, the statements attributed to this publication are absurd. Jose Munoz is an established Argentinian comic book artist who had been working for years at the time of the Giffen controversy and he had already had an entire graphic novel ("Joe's Bar") translated and published in America by Catalan Communications, so there was no question of his identity. As well, how could these supposed multiple bogus Munoz's have managed to sue Giffen's fans with fake identification papers, and on what grounds? How would these cartoonish impostors from South America have located these Giffen fans in the United States in order to sue them? There is no verifiable record of such nuisance lawsuits other than the questionable publication cited here. As a result of the controversial nature of the statements attributed to this publication, which does not appear to exist, I have removed these statements in the "Controversy" section. I'm noting this here to be fair in case anyone has proof this publication, the sole provided reference for these fanciful statements, is reputable, actually exists, and actually contains the article cited.Boris Tripod —Preceding undated comment was added at 00:26, 28 January 2009 (UTC).[reply]

This section seems too large for what is a minor part of a long career, see [{WP:UNDUE]]. Equally some of it goes on about swipes when this might be better dealt with elsewhere, like comics vocabulary. Surely that whole section can be boiled down to a paragraph and presumably integrated into the main sections (like artwork where it is actually mentioned). There is also quite a bit of unsourced opinion in the other sections (which raises [{WP:BLP]] concerns) like:
  • "That approach has brought him both criticism and admiration, as perhaps best illustrated by the mixed (although commercially successful) response to his work in DC Comics' Justice League International. His work on the 2001 version of Suicide Squad was not nearly as successful,however"
  • "his loose, largely satirical style is arguably a detriment to both the English version of the Battle Royale manga and to the third version of the Defenders, published in 2005-2006."
I also wonder if we can keep the artwork/writing trimmed down and focused on style and expand the biography and break it down into relevant sections, because at the moment those two are large and cover similar ground to the biography. Of course, that depends on whether we actually have any sources for the analysis of his writing/art and looking over those sections it largely just looks like original research to me.
So I'd suggest:
  • Condensing controversy to a paragraph or two and move that to "artwork"
  • Then trim artwork and writing back to what we can actually demonstrate with sources.
  • Expand biography and break it into sections that represent stages in his career - I've been adding sources and I suspect we can find good material from him in his column (I'm sure I recently read about what he thought turned his recent career around, although I'd have to dig that out).
  • Start a bibliography - the text seems a little "listy" in places (and then he did, X, Y, Z, etc." and a bibliography would allow us to focus on key examples (it will be large but we have the option of splitting it off - the important thing is to get it rolling and we can deal with it later).
So really, broader fixes spinning out from the need to "fix" the controversy section. (Emperor (talk) 15:51, 12 March 2009 (UTC))[reply]

Bit of Clean-Up[edit]

Restored the reference to his JLI run as one of the works for which he is best known. Have no idea why someone would have removed that.

Also, pulled unnecessary and extraneous commentary out of the Controversy section without, I think, hurting the factual reporting of what happened and the effect it had on Giffen's reputation. The previous wording felt awfully biased, as if the writer had an axe to grind. Grandpallama (talk) 19:50, 27 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

N.B. He also is credited with plotting/writing in Jeremiah Harm.[edit]

(which itself doesn't have a wiki entry for some reason. Notable as a Boom! comic and as an in-development movie.

142.129.56.146 (talk) 18:06, 8 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

External links modified[edit]

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 6 external links on Keith Giffen. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

This message was posted before February 2018. After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{source check}} (last update: 18 January 2022).

  • If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
  • If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 20:23, 31 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]