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Check back here for detailed information on updates to the reading orders or database, reviews by myself or any of the other site contributors, and general comic news we find interesting! You can also subscribe to an RSS feed for updates.

If you’re new here, you may want to know How To Use This Website. Alternatively, click on a reading order on the sidebar. The current pride of our site is the Recommended Reading Order for the entire DC Universe!

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By | Monday, October 25, 2010 | 11:50 pm | 2 Comments | Blog > Database Updates

Since you have to be registered to participate in the giveaways, it seemed like a good idea to streamline registration. Now you can enter your own password in right when you register, instead of having to wait for an email with a temporary password.

This should cut down a bit on the password change requests as well ;)

I set it so you don’t have to click a confirmation link just to log in (still one for the email updates, I don’t want to annoy anyone by making that automatic). If we get a serious spam problem, I may have to figure out a revised policy, but for now I want it to be as easy as possible to register.

So if you are thinking about entering the Superman trade giveaway, now is a great time to register!

I am having a problem with comments from unregistered writers linking to a blank author page, instead of whatever they put in their “website” field. I’d like to fix that, but I haven’t figured out a way yet. I don’t want to make it so you have to be registered to comment, I feel like it would discourage discussion.

I know a lot of forums and comic websites require people to register, but do you guys agree that it might be better to leave comments open?

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By | Sunday, October 24, 2010 | 7:19 pm | 2 Comments | Blog > Database Updates

Long night working on lots of little tweaks and updates.

Didn’t finish formatting the update post until now, though.

Here’s what I did:

1. Added a Giveaways category for the blog.

2. I moved our first giveaway and the current Superman: Whatever Happened To The Man Of Tomorrow giveaway to the new category.

3. Added the Giveaway category to the top and side navigation

4. Created a Giveaway archive page with a similar layout to Uncle Gorby’s Free Stuff and Comic Issue Reading Orders, but with links to the winner announcements and notes about if a contest is still open or not.

5. Added a Weekly Giveaways! feature box to the top right of the site, which also shows a thumbnail for the current giveaway so you can decide if you’re interested at a glance.

6. Fixed some of the layout issues on the Custom Login page (which had reset after a previous update, much to my dismay.)

7. Fixed Avatar and Profile links on comment threads (it was working for replies but not initial comments.) Comment threads should look much nicer!

8. Updated the Avatar plugin and fixed uploading avatars. again. Not sure why I have to do this so often.

.9 Everyone is set to Subscriber level for now – once we get the backend figured out, everyone can be a contributor again.

10. I added header images for the Comic Issue Reading Orders section and the Giveaways section.

11. I fixed all the titles for the posts in Uncle Gorby’s Corner, which had somehow gotten erased from the database during the server move.

12. Finally, I wrote descriptions for the Fantasy, Science Fiction, Forgotten Realms, Magic: The Gathering, and Ender’s Game reading order lists.

By the way, right now there are only 5 commenters on the contest post – so there’s a chance all of those people will getting books. If you want to get in on the game, again, you’ve got till friday.

Time to sleep!

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By | Saturday, October 23, 2010 | 11:59 pm | 125 Comments | Blog > Giveaways

Update: Winners are currently being contacted! Stay tuned to find out if you’re one of them!

Update: Winners have been announced. Congratulations!

Alright TPBros, check this one out:

To welcome us to the net and congratulate us for reaching 100 users, Heavy Ink has agreed to send copies of Superman: Whatever Happened to The Man Of Tomorrow to five lucky Trade Reading Order site users.

Awesome, right?

First of all, some of you may not be familiar with Heavy Ink. It’s a rare thing: a fan driven online comic store with a forum, user home pages, etc. Every issue is at least 20% off and shipping for graphic novels and orders of at least three comics is just 99 cents. You can just use the forum or just buy your issues there.

Site user Brian mentioned TRO to their president and apparently he got a kick out of it because they’re donating some books for us to give away!

Which is great, because that means you get free books and I don’t have to buy them, cover shipping, or wait in line at a smelly post office. Win – Win – Win, right?

They’ve even hinted that if this goes well, we’ll be making a regular thing of this. Coupled with the giveaways I’ve already got planned, that might get us set for a year of weekly giveaways!

I’m super stoked, because my second favorite thing after sorting books is giving books. It’s all about enabling other people’s geeky vices.

Now that the little introduction to Heavy Ink is out of the way, let’s get to the meat of this particular giveaway.

The Rundown:

(5) Winners

(1) Trade Paperback of Superman: Whatever Happened To The Man Of Tomorrow Each

Five of you each get a copy of this book shipped directly to your door. I bet they will look something like this:

This is a collection of some of the absolute best Superman stories, penned by comic’s mad hermit scribe, Alan Moore. The cover is by Brian Bolland and the book includes work by Curt Swan, Dave Gibbons, and Rick Veitch.

Not only does this book include two of the most famous Supes stories (“Whatever Happened To The Man of Tomorrow” and “For The Man Who Has Everything”) they also threw in the exceptional issue of DC Comics Presents with my favorite character of all time: Swamp Thing.

Ok, are you quaking in your boots and wondering exactly how you win a copy?

“How Do I Win A Copy?”

ok, ok.

Just log in to your TRO account and leave a comment. That simple!

I’ll be randomly picking the winners from the comments on this post at the end of the week (just before we post next week’s giveaway.)

Let’s keep the comments interesting if we can – doesn’t matter what you talk about and you can even talk to each other. Just by having a comment on this post, you are entered into the drawing.

The comment must be under your registered account. So make sure you’re logged in!

Of course, if you haven’t registered yet, you can do that now. Click here to register.

You will also need to register for an account on Heavy Ink in order to receive your book – so you might want to do that now.

Note: You are not required to give any financial information of any kind for either account and only have to give your address if you win. Unless you wanna order some comics from Heavy Ink, of course. But that’s up to you.

Just to be clear, I’ll go over the dates. The post is open to comments starting now, October 24th 2010. You must comment (while logged in) by 11:59 PM EST, October 29th 2010.

I will contact winners that night/morning. You must reply by 11:59 PM EST, October 30th to confirm.

If you don’t reply within the day, I’ll have to give the book to the next person on the list. Once everyone is confirmed, I’ll post the winners just like last time!

Feel free to ask if anything is unclear – you can even ask a question here to count as your comment on this post!

Alright everyone, good luck!

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By | Friday, October 22, 2010 | 1:19 am | 0 Comments | Blog > Database Updates

I thought I’d put up some more of these for fun, but apparently I’m so ridiculously picky about them and so amazingly bad at google image search that it took a lot longer than I’d expected.

Anyway, new images are up for these DC Character Reading Orders:

Superman

Robin

Robin (Dick Grayson)

The Spirit

Justice Society

Nightwing

Teen Titans

Legion of Super Heroes

Sandman

Lois Lane

Batgirl (Cassandra Cain)

That’s it for tonight, I think. Big fun coming this weekend/early next week. Set your chronometers.

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By | Thursday, October 21, 2010 | 3:25 am | 0 Comments | Blog > Database Updates

I changed some more stuff in the backend to let me check off whether a book’s database entry is complete. I’d been using the covers as a kind of indication of this, but since I kept adding new features and custom fields, it’s not really an accurate accounting anymore. Plus this way, I can add covers and not have to double check the book later – I have an easy way of telling which ones are totally tagged and filled out.

I think it’s a pretty great system, because it means I can add covers to any book and spruce up the looks of the site a bit! Far too many books are lacking.

For this tiny update, I’ve added covers to the following books:

Tor Vol. 1
Tor Vol. 2
Tor Vol. 3
Tor: A Prehistoric Odyssey
Wolverine: Classic Volume 1

Just messing about making sure everything works properly. Hopefully I’ll get the time to do a bunch at once soon – maybe while I’m scanning film.

Seems ok so far, though I think the 100 books per page may be making the site run slower overall. Not sure if it’s worth the trade off.

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