Ok, taking into account the advice from Daniel and in the CBR thread AND the dates of publication, I’ve sketched up this order (don’t worry about the batman/final crisis thing. I’ll make a note about how they should be read together, but the RIP volume is technically the last one to be put down after the final page is read.)

1. Batman: Batman and Son – Batman 655-658, 663-666 September – December 2006, April – July 2007
2. Batman: Under The Cowl – Batman: Legends Of The Dark Knight 168, Batman 666, Batman Beyond 1, Batman 512, Detective Comics 665 and Teen Titans 18 1993, 1994, 1999, 2003, 2005, 2007
3. Batman: Resurrection of Ra’s Al Ghul – Batman 670-671, A26; Robin 168-169, A7; Nightwing 138-139; Detective 838-839 November 2007 – February 2008
4. Batman: The Black Glove – Batman 667-669, 672-675 August – November 2007, February – May 2008
5. Batman: The Heart of Hush – Detective 846-850 September 2008 – January 2009
6. Batman: The Black Casebook – Batman 65, 86, 112-113, 134, 156, 162; Detective Comics 215, 235, 247, 267; World’s Finest Comics 89 June 1951 – March 1964
7. Final Crisis – Final Crisis 1-7, Submit, Superman Beyond 1-2 July 2008 – March 2009
8. Batman: Batman R.I.P. – Batman 676-683, DC Universe 0 June 2008 – January 2009
9. Elseworlds: Batman: Whatever Happened To The Caped Crusader? – Batman 686, Batman Black and White 2, Detetive Comics 853, Secret Origins Special 1, Secret Origins 36 1989, 1996, April 2009
10. Robin: Search for a Hero – Robin 175 – 183 August 2008 – April 2009
11. Nightwing: The Great Leap – Nightwing 147-153 October 2008 – April 2009
12. Batman: Battle for the Cowl – Batman: Battle For The Cowl 1-3, Gotham Gazette: Batman Alive?, Gotham Gazette: Batman Dead? May – July 2009
13. Batman: Battle for the Cowl Companion – One Shots: Arkham Asylum, Comissioner Gordon, Man-Bat, The Network, The Underground May – July 2009
14. Oracle: The Cure – Oracle: The Cure 1-3 (BFTC Crossover), Birds of Prey 126-127 May – July 2009
15. Batman: Streets of Gotham: Hush Money – Batman: Streets Of Gotham 1-4; Detective Comics 852; Batman 685 March – November 2009
16. Batman: Long Shadows – Batman 687-691 August – December 2009
17. Red Robin: The Grail – Red Robin 1-5 August – December 2009
18. Batman And Robin: Vol. 1: Batman Reborn – Batman And Robin 1-6 August 2009 – January 2010
19. Batwoman: Elegy – Detective Comics 854-860 August 2009 – February 2010
20. Gotham City Sirens: Vol. 1: Union – Gotham City Sirens 1-7 August 2009 – February 2010
21. Blackest Night: Black Lantern Corps Vol. 1 – Blackest Night Batman 1-3; Blackest Night Superman 1-3; Blackest Night Titans 1-3;
22. Batgirl: Vol. 1: Batgirl Rising – Batgirl 1-7 October 2009 – April 2010
23. Batman: Life After Death – Batman 692-699 December 2009 – July 2010

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A Last Rites / Batman: R.I.P / Batman Reborn series/event list has been created and given a header image. Obviously I haven’t decided quite what to call it yet. The following books have been added to that list, though it’s currently not sorted. Once all the books on this list that are unplaced are placed into the RRO, this list will sort itself out.

• Batman & Son
• Batman: Under The Cowl
• Batman: The Resurrection of Ra’s Al Ghul
• Batman: The Black Glove
• Final Crisis
• Batman R.I.P.
• Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader
• Battle for the Cowl
• Battle for the Cowl Companion
• Batman and Robin: Batman Reborn
• Oracle: The Cure
• Red Robin: The Grail
• Streets of Gotham: Hush Money
• Gotham City Sirens: Union
• Batwoman: Elegy
• Batgirl: Batgirl Rising
• Robin: Search for a Hero
• Nightwing: The Great Leap
• Batman: Life After Death
• Batman: Long Shadows
• Blackest Night: Black Lantern Corps Vol. 1

Also, Supergirl: Get A Life has been added to the Final Night listing.

Edit: After a recommendation on the CBR forum, I’ve added “Batman: The Heart Of Hush” to this listing. If you’re interested in seeing the discussion around the order (and the order as it develops, feel free to check out our thread in the batman forum!

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Editable Comments

I spent some more time tonight working to make commenting and discussion a little more user – friendly.

The first thing of note is that I bought Ajax Edit Comments (you guys better be glad I spent some money on you so you can fix your typos!)

Now users can edit their comments – after you make a comment you’ll see a little timer counting down. As an anonymous user you’ll have five minutes to correct your typo, markup, or add anything, and so on. Feel free to go ahead and test it on this post!

You can also request that the comment be deleted if you accidentally double posted or feel like you really screwed up.

If you want to register, I’ve added a registration link near the comment box. Also, login/logout links.

Registered users can edit their own comments indefinitely (don’t abuse it – I can still see what changes you make/are making) and will be able to set other cool options in the future.

Also, in the future guest authors, moderators, and editors would have to have a registered account. In the long run, you should be able to suggest tags for books, suggest new books to be added to the database, and so on.

For right now though, we’ve got the comment editing.

Allowed HTML

HTML has always been allowed in comments, actually, but I made a note of it above the comment field.

Links are fine (and highly encouraged!) I like browsing the internet as much as anyone! Feel free to include a signature if you want, though you’ll have to hand type/paste it every time you comment and a link signature is kind of redundant since you already get a name link.

However, just to dissuade spam and keep the site safe, any comment that contains more than two links or any strange code will be held for moderation. Doesn’t mean it will be automatically denied (there are plenty of reasons to link a lot of things in one comment on this website!) but you might have to wait a little bit to see it show up.

Quicktags or WYSIWYG Editing

I really want this to work, but so far it has some problems. When I use NicEdit or TinyMCE sometimes the box just doesn’t let you click it it to start typing. I can’t figure out why.

The quicktag version isn’t showing up. So for now, just type the html, I guess. I’ll keep working on this later today.

Contact Form

I’ve also added a contact form to the Feedback page. My email is on every page, in the sidebar, but if you want you can also use the contact form (or leave comments, of course!)

Comment!

Since there are now two reviews in the database, Review links are now active!

I added a custom field for the review link to the backend, so any title that has a review will now have the link displayed between the “Info” link and the “Amazon” link.

You can see it in action on this filtered list for titles containing “Man Of Steel” – the Lex Luthor one has a review, the others, unfortunately, do not yet.

I think that I will eventually remove the “Info” link, as it’s redundant. Clicking the title of the book sends you to the same page for the database entry. I only ever included it so something would show in that field and to make it easier for new visitors. I think that people will be able to figure it out without the info link, though, and if they click review they can always find the database entry from that page as well.

Then I created a new category under the blog category, for the reviews.

That allowed me to put up a category specific recent posts widget on the top right there – now you’ll have the most recent reviews up! I changed some of that widgit coding to fix formatting and make it so the thumbnails and other info displayed properly.

Then I had to create a new custom field for the book title, because I didn’t want it to redundantly say “review” next to the link for each book – so the text for the link is made by the information put in that field, not the actual post title. That was a bit of genius, I think, if I’m allowing myself to pat my own back a little.

I think it looks great! It’s kind of constant battle with what information I want to show in the sidebars, but I don’t think these two new widgets (review, and comments) are too much. This way I can keep doing updates about the reading order and site issues without worrying about pushing the reviews off the front page (as they’re arguably a lot more fun to read!)

Also, I did one minor tweak to the layout, removing an absolute height measurement on the booklist headers – now they should conform properly to the header content and look a little nicer. Let me know if you find any that are broken!

Comment!

Just a quick note – I took Outsiders: The Road To Hell off of the New Krypton List and added Superman and the Legion of Superheroes.

As DC Comics Message Board user Supermanbeyond told me:

> In any case, thanks for the advice – do you think the
> legion book is 100% necessary? I’d be happy to add
> it.

It introduces the Legion of Superheroes of the current continuity, who play a huge role in Last Stand of New Krypton. It also brings the whole xenophobia theme.

> Does the outsiders trade have absolutely no
> interaction, or just not that important?

None. Maybe there were plans, but they were canceled.

I heard about those plans being canceled elsewhere too, actually.

In any case, those have been switched in/out. The Superman and The Legion Of Superheroes trade has also been moved in the reading order, to right around Countdown to Final Crisis Volume 4 on Page 35.

Edit: Also added JLA Vol. 18: Crisis Of Conscience to the Identity Crisis reading order.

9 Comments