FastestBlender

good old fashioned superhero fighting is code for poor storytelling. 4 stars is too generous, particularly when comics cost what they do.

Ask yourself these 3

Questions:

1. Did this year of stories add or improve upon any of the Batman mythos?

2. 10, 20 years from now, will this be referenced as part of Batman's origin?

3. Has T Guerro ever given Scott Snyder less than 5 stars?

@scarletbatman They rarely review a ho hum book and nearly never a bad book currently. They currently pick things they believe has a great potential and thus the worst rating you see is usually a 3. As for revising the rating system, I've been advocating that since I found this site to the point where people have flagged my comments. Tony refuses to do so, citing a cranky webmaster. Allowing 1/2 stars, upping it to a 10 star system, this would elevate a tremendous amount of confusion to the reviews. @inferiorego , wouldn't you enjoy the ability to award 1/2 stars? You can define what those stars mean to you on the podcast till your blue in the face, there's still going to be left brain people who see 3/5 and equate that to 60%, aka a failing grade in American education.

The Problem: Complaints that Comic Vine ratings are inflated. Currently 91% of the books on the reviews page have 4 or 5 stars. Concurrently, Comic Vine staff find the complaints irritating and desire readers to focus on the written review rather than the star rating. @g_man explains that they select the ~20% of the releases every week to review that they deem are "good books"

The Solution: Do away with ratings and replace them with a title akin to "Comic Vine's picks of the week" at the top of the page featuring reviews. @inferiorego no longer has to struggle between star reviews, it's made apparent that these are the books you want to focus on and readers are left merely with the written review to focus on.

*wipes hands*

The New 52: Where unfortunate things happen

http://www.ign.com/articles/2014/04/24/writers-robert-venditti-and-van-jensen-address-controversial-new-52-wally-west-in-the-flash-30

"DC said they wanted us to re-introduce Wally West and they wanted him to be bi-racial" - Robert Venditti

Not a mystery Tony. It's upper brass and editors issuing edicts instead of letting writers do their jobs. These are the same people that force major last minute rewrites of scripts and cause the Diggle's and the Fialkov's of the world to say "thanks, but no thanks". I'm all for diversity in comics, but not tokenism. No one has a passionate idea for a bi-racial Flash at DC, it's just PR people failing to properly address the issue that all top DC characters are white males. Are Justice League is too homogeneous? Well, we'll throw Cyborg in there, but we won't find a talented young African American writer to develop him in his own series. That's tokenism.

Look across the isle, and you see Miles Morales. A fully developed character taking over the mantle of a popular white hero. Bendis had an idea of who this guy is and how his superhero career would differ from Peters. And he's huge, people cosplay as him and Donald Glover wants to play him in a movie. That's diversity.

"@g_man: But it is more like we are getting the name back not the character. The two have a completely different backstory, connection to Flash, and upbringing (he seems to be the generic street punk kid in the Annual preview) and I don't see how he can ever be the Wally people wanted back."

Exactly. That's why people are upset.

From IGN's comments (with over 1000 likes):

"While I have no problems with it, it seems a LOT of comic companies are doing things like this just to be different and it comes off as artificial. Personally, instead of changing established heroes, I'd prefer them to introduce great new heroes. Why couldn't they introduce a new Flash who's biracial instead of having Wally West? It wouldn't be the first time the mantle has changed hands. For example, John Stewart isn't Hal Jordan turned black-- he's a great GL on his own."

That's it.

Finally, it is on the storyteller, not the reader, to create suspension of disbelief. "You should know they're just gonna change it back" ABSOLUTELY NOT. You should put down a comic saying "wow, I have no idea what's gonna happen next". And if you're just gonna pull time jump stunts and crisis' upon crisis', people are gonna stop paying attention. It's disrespectful to the creators and the readers

Hmm, what could be the factor for that...

This has become the morning zoo of comic podcasts. Constant music, punchlines that make no sense followed by wacky sound clips. I'm giving up, maybe if @missj returns I'll try again, but this sophomoric humor does nothing for the medium

STOP WITH THE MUSIC/SOUND CLIPS

But in all seriousness, no casting announcement change the fact that this movie is still helmed by Snyder, who's yet to make a superhero movie I've enjoyed and that it's been mushed into a pre-justice league jam band. It's been fast tracked, slow tracked, and has multiple script doctors. Non of this lends itself to good storytelling.