Update: This giveaway is now over. Stay tuned! Also, feel free to enter one of our currently running giveaways.

Update 2: The winner has been announced.

Here’s the weekly giveaway!

One of the first groups of trades I started collecting was DC’s Elseworlds.

They were mostly self contained and often could be found for cheap, so it was easy to get into without feeling I had to buy too much.

This particular Elseworlds, published in 1991, is one of my favorites.

Called Batman: Holy Terror, it’s a little book that introduces a DC Universe amazingly messed up and hard to top – even in longer arcs.

While a Batman book, there are moments in here with several DC characters, though I don’t want to reveal which in this post. Look forward to reading it yourself!

The Rundown:

(1) Prize: One copy of Batman: Holy Terror

(1) Random Comment Winner: One logged in commenter will be randomly selected from the replies to this post.

Eligibility: You must be registered and logged in when you comment to be eligible. You must also be in the continental USA for shipping purposes. If you are overseas and want to pay for the shipping yourself, feel free to enter, but keep in mind that it will probably be more expensive than just buying the book.

Deadline: You have until 11:59 on Friday, February 4th, 2011.

Hey, that’s one day before my birthday!

Good luck everyone!

You can see the previous giveaways and results here.

40 Comments

A bunch of books have covers now, but I haven’t been keeping track – so no list. Just know that more covers are in.

I also moved Flash: Born to Run. The stories are about Wally West as Kid Flash, but they’re all told from a perspective of the character later in life looking back. There’s no perfect spot for it, since the back stories in the volume are from a few years later (and contain cameos from characters important later on) but the main story is best read WAY after events in Barry Allen and Wally West‘s lives. I’ll go into more detail soon.

Main reason for this post is that I changed some style code and the reading lists now display book titles in a bold, black, san-serif font. I’m not sure this is the way to go, but I felt the titles of the list entries deserved some sort of differentiation from all the other info that’s now coming in.

It looks a lot better on the lists where every book has a title (though those are still rare.)

Let me know what you think!

2 Comments

Now that everyone has gotten back to me and confirmed, I’m excited to announce the winners for our three holiday giveaways!

First up is our grand prize:

Winning Batman: No Man’s Land Vol. 1-5 is:

Mike from Queensbury, NY (TRO user MikePhantom)

Our four runners up for the first holiday giveaway each get a copy of Ghost Rider / Wolverine / Punisher: Hearts Of Darkness:

Chris from Chatsworth, CA (TRO user CaptainHammer)

Jason from Henderson, CO (TRO user zoomfactor32)

Andrew from Riverside, CA (TRO user andybmcd)

Daniel from Circle Woodstock, GA (TRO user yudansha)

Next up, we have our first set of ten Batman Adventures winners, who each snagged a copy of the book with their speedy commenting on Christmas morning:

Ryan from Glastonbury, CT (TRO user WallyEast)

Dan from New York, NY (TRO user xxexplosivoxx)

Chris from Port Orchard, WA (TRO user Dirt55)

John from Annville, PA (TRO user jw634200)

Johannes from Rödelsee, Germany (TRO user jonah_X)

Brian from Middletown, NJ (TRO user -b)

Marc from Milwaukee, WI (TRO user Marc)

Joseph from Foothill Ranch, CA (TRO user AnsumRiku)

Tristan from Leicestershire, England (TRO user VoodooDoctor)

Steve from Cinnaminson, NJ (TRO user Steve M.)

The next set of ten Batman Adventures winners snagged a copy of the book by chance, selected from the remaining comments on the post:

Henry from Las Vegas, NV (TRO user henraldo)

Nate from Franklin, WI (TRO user natohendo)

Cailey from Toronto, ON, Canada (TRO user kikilouise)

Justin from Marietta, GA (TRO user bigjust)

Bill from Acworth, GA (TRO user van.meeks)

Dan from Richmond, VA (TRO user duncanpr)

Timothy from Burbank, CA (TRO user JusticeOrigins)

Daniel from San Diego, CA (TRO user Daniel [oeconomist.com])

Drew from North Caldwell, NJ (TRO user defenestr8)

Sam from Annapolis, MD (TRO user rellimsam)

Finally, we’ve got our new years giveaway giveaway winner, recieiving a hardcover copy of Newuniversal: Everything Went White:

Jesse from Medford, OR (TRO user Body62)

Congratulations to everyone!

Thanks to all of you for being with us over the holiday, commenting and supporting Trade Reading Order.

The books will go out soon! Due to the volume and shipping costs, not as quick as the normal one week turnaround that we had running most of last year, but you’ll get them – I promise!

And if you weren’t on the winners list this time around, we’ll have plenty of opportunities going forward. Right now, we’ve got a copy of Final Crisis Aftermath: Dance up.

After that, check back each week for a new giveaway. You may also want to subscribe to our feed or email list for updates – as sometimes quickness will be a factor, like with the Batman Adventures books.

I hope the new year is treating everyone well and you’re enjoying the parade of reviews as we catch up to our one-review-a-day goal.

6 Comments

Update: This giveaway is now over. Stay tuned! Also, feel free to enter one of our currently running giveaways.

Update 2: The winner has been announced.

Here’s the weekly giveaway!

For this week’s giveaway, I thought I’d bring something more modern.

Of all the different spin offs out of Final Crisis, I found this book the most interesting. Following Japan’s Super Young Team, Final Crisis Aftermath: Dance collects 1-6 of their own miniseries.

It’s written by Joe Casey with art by Chriscross and Eduardo Pansica.

Most Excellent Superbat! Big Atomic Lantern Boy! Shiny Happy Auquazon! Shy Crazy Lolita Canary! Well-Spoken Sonic Lightning Flash!

It’s almost offensive, but having been to Japan and seen the t-shirts, I have to say that marketing would probably do pretty well over there.

The Rundown:

(1) Prize: One copy of Final Crisis Aftermath: Dance

(1) Random Comment Winner: One logged in commenter will be randomly selected from the replies to this post.

Eligibility: You must be registered and logged in when you comment to be eligible. You must also be in the continental USA for shipping purposes. If you are overseas and want to pay for the shipping yourself, feel free to enter, but keep in mind that it will probably be more expensive than just buying the book.

Deadline: You have until 11:59 on Friday, January 28th, 2011.

Good luck everyone!

You can see the previous giveaways and results here.

30 Comments

I was recently contacted by Corey Michael Blake (President of Writers of the Round Table) about a series of comics his company is publishing.

Collected under the new imprint SmarterComics, they’re mostly self help and business related publications. The promotion for these comics is definitely something different, with claims like “Guaranteed to make you smarter in 14 days, or your money back.”

Now, this is something that up until this point, I’d never considered purchasing myself.

However, as a fan of the sequential medium, the idea seems to work well – such topics could benefit from fun and easy to read introductions (or, if the kind of self help book I hate, could benefit from being trimmed down from a drawn out idea designed to make a full book out of a simple concept.)

I hadn’t read any of the original books these comics were based on, so I told him to send them on over. They came in today.

I was originally going to do a round up look on this relatively small sub-genre of comics. After flipping through the first one in the stack, I’ve decided they deserve a little more attention.

So I’ll be reviewing a few of them individually, mixed in with our other ongoing reviews.

In a way, I’m thankful – I come from a fine arts/academia background and could probably use some advice from the business world. Hopefully these books are as good as they claim!

2 Comments