Forum:Do comic book covers count as "graphics"?

Index → Advice and Assistance → Do comic book covers count as "graphics"?

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Opening

One of the recent changes that's been recently made to our validation policy appears to be that we now count illustrations as in-universe sources, under the GRAPHIC prefix; I dunno where that ruling was made, but it's all good by me.

What I wanted to ask is if this new rule also applies to certain comic book covers? I mean, many of them are pretty easy to dismiss due to being generic (i.e. depicting characters in dynamic poses) or just being representative of whatever story is contained within.

But then we have those novelty covers that depict their own little "stories" as it were. Covers like… the retailer incentive covers for IDW's A Fairytale Life, each depicting the Eleventh Doctor and his first batch of companions in fun little scenes based on classic stories like Snow White and Peter Pan. Or these neat connecting covers of the Tenth and Eleventh Doctors at NYCC together. WaltK ☎ 14:26, 10 October 2023 (UTC)

Discussion

In terms of current policy, definitely not. The criterion for GRAPHIC coverage is that something is a work on its own right, which in 99% of cases should be indicated by its having its own title. A cover is anything but that. In line with the decision to lump DWM illustrations (and the like) into coverage of the audio story itself, comic covers with original narrative info should probably be considered part of that comic story itself, so the information from that IDW cover would be cited to A Fairytale Life itself, etc. I don't think this has been formally established but it would be in line with precedent and I'd be happy for this thread to enshrine as much explicitly.

Of course, this leaves the problem of how to cite non-story-specific covers for anthologies, but that's not specific to comics; it's precisely the issue discussed at Talk:Wild Thymes on the 22 (illustration). A thread to resolve that issue would have to be broader. Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 15:54, 10 October 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, in terms of anthologies there's also a few TV Comic annual and holiday special covers I'd want to cover, but a thread will be needed for that. Cookieboy 2005 ☎ 21:59, 10 October 2023 (UTC)