When I first started reading comics, nobody in the mainstream especially politics ever mentioned superheroes.

It seems like they are more and more becoming part of our national dialogue.

http://youtu.be/-QVMan7Mgy4

So, I won in trivia night at my local bar last night.
 
Best part of the night was when the girl giving out the questions and reading the answers saw that no one playing got the answer to one question, but everyone got the answer to another, and said, "Oh, sure, none of you guys knew what animal was the logo on Gloria Vanderbilt jeans, but somehow you all know where Batman locks up his enemies!" And some guy grabbed the mic from her and said, "'Cause it's fucking Batman!!!"

I've been thinking about this a lot, and I don't like the way comic reviews appear on single issue pages on CV. The way they are right now they appear on the page (at least for me) in order from highest star review to lowest star review. Is there a way to get them to sort differently? If there is, I haven't figured out how.

Where this becomes a problem is if you are reading about a single issue with a lot of reviews. By the current method, the page is filled with 5 star reviews first - even if it's an issue that's overwhelmingly disliked by Viners.

To further complicate this, there is a bug or something that puts zero star reviews first, then 5 star, 4 star, etc. on down. For example, see the latest issue page for All Star Western #1, which starts with a zero star review that zero out of 1 user found helpful, followed by a 5 star review that 2 out of 2 users found helpful.

If I'm trying to decide whether to buy an issue, say, I'd much rather see the majority opinion first whether that be 5 stars or 1 star, and then the second most chosen rating, on down. Or even better, by which reviews are voted "most helpful" first and then all the rest in order of % of star ranking. Even a sorting order by Top Reviewers, or CVers you are following would be better than the current system.

Does anyone else agree with me, or am I the only one?

The backlash against D.C.'s 'sexy' week has gone too far. They've taken such a lashing they'll probably be afraid to make their characters anything but asexless robots for the next few years. But the criticism took a turn for the worse when this blogger took a low blow by using her 7 year old daughter as a litmus test for Starfire in Red Hood and the Outlaws - clearly not a comic intended for that age group.
 
I mean, we can't have it both ways. For years we've struggled at the bonds and practically demanded that the medium be looked at not as funny (literally a synonym of comic) books, but as a legitimate form of artistic expression for all points of views, child and adult, edgy and banal. 
 
Probably one of the best things written about this was by CV's own S. Lima who just put forth the plain - if you don't like it, don't buy it - wisdom. Now lets get one thing straight now, because issues of sex and violence are just doomed to collide more and more with readers of DC's titles now that Vertigo has been folded into the mainstream. Some of the DC titles are going to be for some people and some are going to be for other people, some are going to skew young, and some are going to skew old - and some are just going to skew stupid.
 
I realize that because many of these books are brand new, nobody knows which ones are for which audiences... yet. But that's what's great about a site like ComicVine - you can read the reviews put in by tons of actual fans just like you (and some very much not like you) and get an idea of where to spend that hard earned dollar. And let's face it - how many people are really going to spend the money to collect all 52 of DC's line on a monthly basis? Surely not me. So really, what does it matter what happens in a title you're not reading anyway?

O.K., I've seen a lot of complaints by feminist types about the portrayal of women in the New 52.

Literally, Facebook has been alive with this discussion for the past week.

And... I'm going to grant that they may have a point in a general 'how women are portrayed in comics' sense. But, my complaint is with the characters they seem to be crying out over. The three big ones seem to be Catwoman, Starfire and Wonder Woman.

Now, given that I haven't read either 'Catwoman' or 'Red Hood and the Outlaws' (whoever they are), my comments will be generally about the characters themselves.

Firstly, Catwoman. When has this character not been portrayed as something of a sexually predatory female? In her very first appearance, as the Cat, she basically seduces Batman into letting her go free (much to Robin's chagrin). If I remember right, she actually got Batman to massage her leg in a panel that showed her exposed legs in a way that was quite risque for the time (decades before Mrs. Robinson pulled the same stunt in The Graduate).

Then there's Starfire. Starfire was just behaving the way that alien character Starfire always was. She has never been more than a pair of big breasts with superpowers - and not in a cocky Power Girl sort of way. She is the comic book equivalent of one of those real sex dolls. Always has been. If I remember my Teen Titans correctly, when they had the Secret Origins of the Teen Titans, she was from some planet where they basically didn't do anything at all but eat and fornicate all day until her evil sister Komand'r took over. As a matter of fact I seem to recall when Dick Grayson was feeling troubled, her solution was to offer her body - she was just portrayed as being part of an alien race that thinks differently from not just Earth women, but most people in general about sex. I swear, I'm going to have to go back and find those issues and scan them in. I think comics just swung so far in the intervening decades back to a kids medium that all anyone remembers of Starfire is from the DC animated universe! People, we're talking about a big orange cosmic nympho here, not Wonder Woman.

Speaking of Wonder Woman. That's one I did read. And that's one where I will concede the point. Wonder Woman has never been portrayed as an overtly sexual character. The nude scene in Wonder Woman #1 did seem unnecessary, and I'll buy a charge of gratuitous. But I think that was more Azarello trying to shock than anything else. It wasn't particularly sexy nudity. But again, I concede the point that it was unnecessary (but so was equine decapitation - another thing that seemed to exist only for the shock value).

So there you have it. I don't disagree that there might be more better portrayals of women in comics, and maybe if that's what sold, there would be. For those that wish it was otherwise, I'd say - go do it! Start your own independent comic. I realize that there are far more female comic readers than ever before (I didn't know a single one growing up), I don't know why this has changed, and I think that's a good thing, but don't be surprised if mainstream comics, an industry that caters (much like Hollywood) to the coveted teen boy demographic, persists with unrealistic and un-relatable female characters far too often.

So, I have a couple comics pulled for me down at the shop - I'll hit it up after work, but I'm a little disappointed not many have been reviewed yet - except by CV Staffers (which is on the front of the review page), and I'm not sure I trust 'em. I mean, again they're all highly rated - has even one of the New 52 gotten less than a four star review? Hurry up, fellow CVers - I want to know what's worth buying this week!!!

I was a regular reader of comics in the 1970s and 1980s. I lasted a few years into the 1990s, but eventually, college just got in the way.
Then unemployment picked up where college left off, life priorities, moving to a place with no comic shops, etc. etc.
 
So basically I was out of regular continuity on D.C. and Marvel titles for most of two decades.
I'd still pick up independents, trades, graphic novels, and the odd one-off here and there.
 
THEN I decided to re-read all the major story arcs in the DC Universe from beginning to end - ALL of them.
This is mostly because I am a Batman fan and wanted to catch up on EVRYTHING Batman.
 
So I formed a strategy - first an overview of pre Crisis.
I would read the best stories from the 40s to the 80s (I'm still in that process), taking time out to make detours (for example, if Batman were to team up with Superman, I'd go back and read Superman comics to get caught up on his end of things) etc.
 
Meanwhile I would read Crisis on Infinite Earths again - which I did - and then read the entire history of the DC Universe, not in chronological order of how the issues came out - but in terms of when they take place in continuity - this meant re-reading things like Sandman and Swamp Thing that deal with events in the DCU's primordial history. Then reading such stories as Green Lantern: Emerald Dawn and Batman: Year One, etc. Taking the occasional break to read Elseworlds type stories.
 
Not to mention the independent comics and the Marvel comics (also being read in chronological order).

I began this MAMMOTH journey intending to get caught up on DC continuity several years down the road - and then I would resume happily reading DC comics as they came out.
 
But now DC has thrown a monkey wrench in my plans - my plans that I'm already a couple years into!
They're rebooting the friggin' universe again!
 
Look, everyone knows I hate reboots and retcons - how can you expect a character to grow and develop if his life is a constant stream of 'do-overs'?
 
But, if we're going to do this - let's do it right. DiDidio, I'm looking in your general direction - do it like the Japanese do it - preplan the entire run of the series. Pre plan the reboots, so we know when they are coming. Say, Wonder Woman will run for 100 issues and then reboot and then run another 100 issues and then reboot, or even better, every Jan 1 of every new decade, the titles will reboot - so there will NOT be a reboot in some odd number year - Green Lantern will have an entire decade of stories before there will be a reboot.
 
That way fans can say I like reading the 2010s Green Lantern, the 1990s Green Arrow, and the 2020s Hawkman.
 
Seriously, all I'm asking is for an end to endless reboots in the middle of things - this is seriously worse than all the crossover events that soured me on Marvel in the early 90s.
 
Preplan your reboots so we don't all feel like we are driving down a highway and then there's a sudden dead end.

So... I have been doing a long review for another site about the 'Who Is Donna Troy?' story arc. I'll get to my opinions on that storyline in a minute - first I want to rant to all you coders out there - PLEASE, please, please give thought to your interface. See, on this site I had been reviewing each stage of the Donna Troy story (it spans quite a few issues), over many months. Which means I add to it constantly. Now, I was on a very slow connection when I made my latest post about the final installment 'Who Was Donna Troy' - and the edit button was a tiny little thing you click on, right below an equally tiny 'delete' button. Now, just as I went to hit 'edit', a slow loading banner ad or something at the top of the page shifted everything downward in the split second before my click, causing me to actually hit DELETE. There was no 'are you sure?' or other user prompt - instantly, months of work (I know, I should have backed up in a text doc) was gone - GONE! Irretrievably. UGH! 
 
Now onto the Donna Troy thing - the reason I'm not reviewing it here on CV, is there is no page for the TPB of 'Who is Donna Troy?' and you can't review a story arc. I have to say that I found each and every issue of the 'Who is Donna Troy?' story to be great - in particular, the first issue that has that title - a loving story about Dick Grayson using his detective skills to uncover Donna's past as a gift to his best friend. 
 
I read many of these issues when they came out on the news stands. I was an avid comic reader through the late 80s/early 90s, when life pressures (and weakening storylines) ended my monthly forays into comics. So, while I expected to be a little out of the loop reading a story published a decade after I stopped reading regularly, I have to say that the final story in this arc, highlighted everything I hate about DC. In this story, 'Who Was Donna Troy' from the Teen Titans / Outsiders Secret Files (2003) - which takes place after Donna's funeral (O.K., it was kind of a spoiler, but I went with it)  there is some blonde teenybopper named Cassie who claims to be 'Wonder Girl' narrating the story - Oh-kay... then they spew out a ton of conflicting backstories, none of which jibe with what was recorded in any of the previous stories - including stuff about Donna Troy as "Troia" and a lot of other hogwash. 
 
Seriously, DC, I don't want a comic universe that's in perpetual stasis, but neither do I want to see the origins of my favorite heroes trampled on over-and-over. Stop with the big crossover events that nobody has the time or cash to track down all the parts to. Stop with the massive retconning every few years. I haven't even finished my massive project to catch up on post Crisis on Infinite Earths continuity, and already I've read here on ComicVine, DC is set to do another massive 'revamp'.  
 
It's almost enough to drive me off for good.

Spent the afternoon hanging out with 'Kabuki' creator David Mack.