A huge thank you to Simon (TRO user Daemonicragnorak), who just sent me the first user submitted book review with the new interface!

His review also made it past my stringent editorial oversight ;)

And also congratulations – since I was going to send a trade to the first person to submit a review with the form, he’s unknowingly won himself a little book action!

Of course, he had to be in the UK – so I decided that instead of wasting 70 dollars on fed ex, I’d just get him a ten pound Amazon.co.uk gift card and let him pick his prize.

Simon, the gift certificate should be in your email. Why don’t you let us know what you decided to get in a comment?

Since multi-author reviews are moving forward, I revamped the review layout. It’s now closer to the contest or Uncle Gorby’s layout, with large thumbnails and little excerpts. I also added the date and byline – making sure credit is shown for every review author. In order to get everything to work properly, I actually had to get rid of the “Review” custom post type – so all reviews are now just regular posts in the blog category. No need to really go into detail since everything seems to be working fine now.

The book Simon chose to review was Hellblazer: Haunted. The trade has been updated with a cover and release information – stay tuned for his review in the next post!

4 Comments

Many of you have been asking for a Brightest Day reading list. I’ve done a little research and come up with this so far – but I bet it will change as books come out and we have a chance to check the continuity.

I’ve put the issues of the main miniseries in bold.

Historical Reading:

Justice League International
Crisis On Infinite Earths

Preludes:

Cry For Justice
Blackest Night
Fall Of Green Arrow
Rise of Arsenal

Brightest Day:

1. Green Lantern Corps 47
2. Justice League: Generation Lost 1
3. Power Girl 13
4. Justice League: Generation Lost 2
5. Brightest Day 0
6. Green Lantern 53
7. Green Lantern Corps 48
8. Brightest Day 1
9. Green Lantern 54
10. Green Lantern 55
11. Green Lantern: Emerald Warriors 1
12. Brightest Day 2
13. Brightest Day 3
14. Green Lantern Corps 49
15. Green Lantern Corps 50
16. Green Lantern Corps 51
17. Green Lantern Corps 52
18. Justice League: Generation Lost 3
19. Justice League: Generation Lost 4
20. Justice League: Generation Lost 5
21. Booster Gold 33
22. Booster Gold 34
23. Justice Society of America 40 (Ends right before JLA 44)
24. Justice League of America 44
25. Justice League of America 45
26. Titans: Villains for Hire Special 1
27. Justice League of America 46
28. Justice Society of America 41
29. Brightest Day 4
30. Brightest Day 5 (July 8)
31. Brightest Day: The Atom Special 1
32. Flash Secret Files 2010
33. Flash 1
34. Flash 2
35. Flash 3
36. Flash 4
37. Action Comics 890 (Non-essential – not sure where to place 891-894, none marketed as crossovers)
38. Justice League of America 47
39. Justice Society of America 42
40. Titans 24
41. Titans 25
42. Justice League: Generation Lost 6
43. Brightest Day 6 (July 21)
44. Brightest Day 7 (August 4)
45. Birds Of Prey 1
46. Birds Of Prey 2
47. Birds Of Prey 3
48. Birds Of Prey 4
49. Birds Of Prey 5
50. Flash 5
51. Justice League of America 48
52. Justice League: Generation Lost 7
53. Justice League: Generation Lost 8
54. Justice League: Generation Lost 9
55. Green Arrow 1
56. Green Arrow 2
57. Green Arrow 3
58. Brightest Day 8 (August 18)
59. Brightest Day 9 (September 1)
60. Green Arrow 4
61. Green Lantern 56
62. Green Lantern 57
63. Green Lantern 58
64. Green Lantern: Emerald Warriors 2
65. Green Lantern: Emerald Warriors 3
66. Untold Tales of Blackest Night 1
67. Brightest Day 10 (September 15)
68. Brightest Day 11 (October 06)
69. Titans 26
70. Titans 27

Unplaced as of yet:

Brightest Day 12 (October 20)
Brightest Day 13 (November 3)
Brightest Day 14 (November 17)
Brightest Day 15 (December 1)
Brightest Day 16 (December 15)
Brightest Day 17 (January 5, 2011)
Brightest Day 18 (January 19, 2011)

Action Comics 891
Action Comics 892
Action Comics 893
Action Comics 894

The series will go on till at least until Brightest Day 18 – so obviously we’ve got a lot to go before this list is complete. I’ll update it as I can.

Forum threads on this topic are available at The Green Lantern Corps Message Board and the DC Comics Message Boards. I highly recommend checking them out, as forum users Blue Lantern Superman and Munkeypunk have gone through a lot of very interesting reasoning in compiling their lists. Thanks to Munkeypunk especially for the idea of listing good prerequisite reading.

Neither list is fully up to date or complete, unfortunately – and they conflict in a couple key places. Of course, the comics themselves conflict in a couple places. I’ve done my best to sort them out, along with my own feelings about the continuity. I also found these checklists at Third Eye, which tell us what month each set of issues comes in – not too helpful, unfortunately, since the reading order ends up quite different.

If you have any advice, please let us know! I’ll make the appropriate edits after getting your comment.

Hopefully this helps those of you who are having trouble with this one!

23 Comments

Huuuuge news! You can now submit reviews from any database page, from the Submit Review page, or by emailing them directly to reviews@tradereadingorder.com.

A similar form for submitting books to the database is planned, but that’s a project for another day.

To see the form on a database entry, just click the “Submit Review” link above the comments link.

You don’t have to be registered to submit a review, but since any accepted review will be published (under your name and credit) to our blog readers we will create an account for you if you don’t have one (and email you a temporary password.)

There’s a little bit more information about submitting on the submit review page. It should be pretty straightforward, though!

The Submit Review link has also been added to the sidebar login (visible when you are logged in) and the top navigation under “User CP.” Edit Profile has also been added to the top navigation.

As to why you’d want to write reviews – well, besides for the pleasure of it, and the possibility of being published here (I will hold to our standards, of course!) – people with reviews will be eligible for certain giveaways. I’ve got some big prizes planned and some of them will require a review being written by the entrants. There will be at least once where I will just randomly pick a review author to give a book or two, without even announcing the contest until the winners are chosen. Basically, some books will be given away just to thank participants.

If you’ve written a lot of reviews – you might be opening yourself up to receiving review copies of books you’d like to write about, either through myself, one of my personal suppliers, or a nice company like Heavy Ink.

I’ll keep trying to write reviews when I can, but now everyone is free to get in on the fun.

As usual, let me know any feedback you have about the form, the layout, or anything else!

2 Comments

We’re having some on and off downtime right now. I’ve contacted our host, but no response yet. Since it’s 4:51 am here and there isn’t much I can do about this kind of downtime, I’ll probably just be going to bed and hoping to wake up to a fully functional site and some kind of explanation in my email. I’ll share it with you when I can.

Until then – hope the site is up more than down and my sincere apologies for any inconvenience!

Edit 9:54am: Seems like the site is back to stable performance. Dreamhost stated “We found that this was an issue with our point-to-point link via Alchemy’s fiber connection to our LAX data center” and has more information about the problems here.

Comment!

Just a little time for updates after a long day.

The following DC Comics collected editions have been updated with covers:

The Enemy Ace Archives Vol. 1

The Enemy Ace Archives Vol. 2

Showcase Presents: Enemy Ace

The Spirit Archives Vol. 1

The Spirit Archives Vol. 2

The Spirit Archives Vol. 3

The Spirit Archives Vol. 4

Superman: The Dailies 1939-1940

Batman: The World’s Finest Comics Archives Vol. 1

Batman: The World’s Finest Comics Archives Vol. 2 (This book was also misplaced in the reading order and is now correctly placed after the Superman World’s Finest Archives Vol. 2)

I get some days off Wed and Thu, but I won’t be here much since I’ll be working on the Marvel list offline. I’ll try to do some small updates while taking breaks from that.

Oh, and thanks everyone for your enthusiasm in your comments on the superman trade contest. It is amazingly motivating to hear how useful the site is for you.

Comment!