Welcome, New Reader!
This is a site to make your life easier. We’ve done our best to make it as intuitive as possible, but there is a lot of information here, so we understand if you’re a little confused.
If you’re curious about how the site works, just follow along with this guide. Click on the expand link next to a topic for more information. If you have any questions, feel free to post them in the comment section at the end – as you and other users post your questions, it will act as a sort of FAQ!
I highly recommend registering! We take very little information (and don’t share it with anyone!) It’s mainly so you can have site content that is just for you and so you can participate in discussion! You can even use a fake name and a secondary email, but you can’t build your collection without logging in, unfortunately.
Note: This whole thing is a little out of date – since it was created we’ve added a Forum, a lot of minor updates, and most importantly, the ability to add books to your collection and automatically sort it in your own profile page! Once things have settled down, we’ll finish reworking this How To page.
This site as a whole is composed of two large parts. There is the Blog and there is the Database. There are also several other minor pages, such as this one, a feedback and contact page, links page, and a list of upcoming features currently in development. There’s also the home page, which serves as a welcome point and gateway to the rest of the content.
On all of these pages, the sidebar navigation stays on the right. This shows a little of the latest activity on the site and helps you find some of the more popular database content.
The database is the heart of the site. This site is unique in its ability to dynamically generate accurate reading order lists for thousands of characters, events, and even entire publishing universes! The database has two main views – the Reading Order listing and the Book Entry
This works through a system of database entries and taxonomies. Each book has a unique page in the database (some have more than one if they are included in multiple major lists, such as a Marvel and DC crossover book.) This page is then hand stocked with accurate information about the title.
Instead of just having static information, though, the book is also tagged with terms that can be used to generate new reading lists based on Recommended Reading Orders and/or Chronological Orders.
You can browse an entire reading order by scrolling, do a ctrl-f search to find a certain book’s place in the order or filter the list to books about a certain term by using tags or the filter fields in the sidebar.
For example, I could create a filtered list by typing “Legends of The Dark Knight” in the “Issue” field and the site will return a filtered list of all books containing issues of that title.
If you want more specific findings, such as what page a book is on, try using the google search, which takes the standard google search modifiers.
Book Entries on the Reading Order
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When you visit or generate a reading order, such as the DC Universe Recommended Reading Order, you’ll see lists of of items that look like this:
This is how the book entry looks when viewed in a reading order! Let’s do a rundown of each segment.
The information is presented with a thumbnail of the trade paperback first.
This is followed by the title, often with a character name attached. You can click on the title to take you to the book’s individual page.
Next to the title are up to four links.
The first link is to that same individual page, for more information hosted here. You can find a larger version of the cover or covers and other goodies, such as a list of tags or the creators involved, under that first link.
The second link directs you to a review of the book at this site, by one of our contributing authors.
The third link takes you to the book at Amazon, for information such as user reviews, other editions, and general pricing estimates.
The last link is for the title’s page at the Comic Book Database so you can find links to the individual issues included and so on.
The next column lists the original issues that were collected into the volume. Sometimes this is marked as prestige (a squarebound advertisement-free original comic release format that sits nicely on the shelf) or OGN, which stands for “original graphic novel.”
The last column holds the original publication dates of the included issues.
You can also add information by commenting on a specific title!
The Blog is where the staff and contributors post Updates to the site, Reviews of titles in the database, and any fun News, Interviews, or Feature Stories that readers might be interested in. It’s basically a publication a lot like other comic websites, online zines, and personal blogs. The layout and feel might be familiar to you if you spend a lot of time on the internet!
Each post has a title, and under that is a little link to more information about the contributor and a timestamp of when the post was created. There’s also a small note about how many comments the post has here.
The content of the post comes next, be it a review, news post, or whatever – the meat is in the middle.
On the bottom there are a couple links with subscription options, a display of how many comments are currently on the post, and a sharing widget that you can use to send that content to your friends.
The Pagination Navbar
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This navigation aid loads in the bottom right corner of every page.
Page 1 of 3123»
If there are multiple pages to be found (such as for older blog posts or the next page of a reading order) the navbar will display some Page Numbers and/or next and last links.You can hover over those in this dummy navbar, but they’re not active here.
Even if there is no pagination for the content you’re looking at, the Quickscroll Arrows are still there – they send you to the top or bottom of the active page! You can try them here, but be prepared to scroll back!
The sidebar may look a little intimidating at first – but it’s an extremely useful tool. Not only does it keep the most important links on every page, it also allows you to quickly get to parts of the site you need.
The Subscription and Social section comes first on the left, and includes links to the RSS feeds, an email subscription box, and links to us on Twitter, Facebook, and Comic Vine. Under those, there is also an AddThis share applet which will allow you to send whatever page you are on to your friends.
Right under there is our Homepage Navigation. The first link will be to this page, for instructions on how to use the site! The second is a link back to the Homepage, then a link to the Blog, with it’s three subcategories (Updates, Reviews, and News). Under that is the Upcoming Features page, Feedback / Contact, and Links. The last part of this section has a link to email Ian and to Ian’s personal website.
Since the main list on the site right now is the DC Universe Recommended Reading Order, the sidebar currently shows the Series/Events from that universe and the 100 most heavily tagged DC Comics Characters.
The List section shows every sorted reading order and the Creator section generated reading orders from books in every list – showing all books credited to that creator in our database.
Almost every part of this website is open to comments. There is no way to write directly on a reading order listing (yet!) but if you think a book is misplaced you can comment on that particular book.
Likewise, feel free to weigh in on discussions about book placements or updates in the blog, debate reviews with the contributing writer, or give us feedback anywhere you see a comment box. This site is for you and you should not be scared to get involved!
Still Confused? Found a Bug?
Hopefully this guide has answered any questions you’ve got about the website, but if you’re still having trouble we’d love to help you out.
Leave a comment here for a response or email Ian directly – he’ll do his best to help you or fix the issue.
Wanting to purchase the graphic novel of the R A Salvatore Forgotten Realms “Siege of Darkness” and ” Passage of Dawn”, also looking for the graphic comic of part 2 and 3 Starless Night. Does anyone know where I can purchase these novels, in graphic form only. Thanks.
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It looks like there are a few R. A. Salvatore graphic novels on this list but not Siege of Darkness. And Starless Night looks out of stock on amazon. :-/
I haven’t dealt with any of the forgotten realms comics yet, so I’m not particularly familiar with them, unfortunately (I’m still reading through the regular novels myself.)
According to wikipedia, it looks like only these books have been adapted to graphic novel format thus far:
* Homeland
* Exile
* Sojourn
* The Crystal Shard
* Streams of Silver
* Trial by Fire
* The Halfling’s Gem
* Eye for an Eye
* Legacy
* Starless Night
So maybe that’s why I’m having trouble finding Siege for you :-/
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