Hosted by PopCultureShock, ComicRankings is the comics & manga equivalent of GameRankings/GameStats and RottenTomatoes. There are currently 5,594 reviews in the CR database -- and counting! If you do regular comic and/or Manga reviews and would like your scores to be included on ComicRankings, please email us.
Happy New Year, kids, and welcome to the unveiling of ComicRankings, the comics & manga equivalent of GameRankings/GameStats and RottenTomatoes.
As with those sites, ComicRankings will collect reviews from across the web and calculate the average score. (For example: World War Hulk was reviewed 6 times with an average score of 72.8). But beyond the single issue, CR will also emphasize the bigger picture to show how a series or creator or publisher has fared over time.
This data is all pulled from the CR database, which currently has over 5,500 reviews — a total which still seems fairly amazing to me considering I thought I was starting things off small by sticking to (a) reviews for books released in 2007 and (b) just a handful of websites. (See sidebar. If you don’t see your favorite site listed, it’s most likely because they don’t score their reviews).
ComicRankings converts all scores to a 100 point scale, which I realize is pretty impractical when you just want to know if a book is good, bad, or just kind of meh — but it’s absolutely necessary for purposes of comparison. Actually at this point, I don’t have any real rankings implemented as I’m still working on an equation which will take into account other factors beyond the review score average, such as # of reviews and Diamond sales figures (which will be the next big set of data I add in).
Suffice it to say that ComicRankings will be growing greatly in scope in 2008, but here are some numbers from the year just past for starters:
COMICRANKING’S BEST & WORST OF 2007
(Tables are sortable by clicking on column header. You can also click linked Publishers/Creators/Books for details).
PUBLISHER SCORES (for Publishers with 20+ books reviewed)
I guess this wasn’t clear enough, but all the sites used by ComicRankings (listed on the sidebar) give scores for their reviews. While you’re right that only IGN uses the 100 point scale, everyone else cited here uses 5 stars, a 10 point scale or the letter grade (A-F) system. If you click on any of those single issues at the bottom you can actually see the scores from different sites. Sorry for any confusion. I’ve edited my post to make this clearer.
3.
Bevbos | January 7th, 2008 at 11:32 am
I don’t personally think “conventional wisdom” from the internet is a superior indication of quality than sales. For the most part I agree with the rankings here, but there are a couple of items that sort of boggle the mind, unless you consider “fanboy” groupthink.
Well hopefully averaging all the reviews together will reduce the impact of any fanboy groupthink. And like I said, I do realize this might not the most practical thing in the world, but if people find it useful, interesting or otherwise entertaining & informative I’m glad.
6.
SMH | January 7th, 2008 at 12:46 pm
I came across harsh in my initial criticism. I think that this is a good idea but it is only really relevant to the most popular/highest selling comics eg. Ultimates, Astonishing X-men etc. With so many specialist sites (Manga/Anime/X-men) who only review books relevant to their reader. Compared to many film/game review sites that review every film/game,with the exception of IGN most of these sites review less than 10 books a week. To say a book is good/bad when only 2 sites consistently review it is inacurrate.
SMH: Don’t worry, I didn’t think your initial comment as harsh; in fact, I’ve had the same thoughts you have. I’m just going to try and make the site as comprehensive as possible, so we’ll see how that goes!
Pedro: True, and I do hope to add reviews from those kinds of sites. The more reviews in the database, the better!
Just curious… do you have a way of coping with sites like mine, which do reviews but don’t come up with a final ranking on any kind of scale? I used to try to award each issue I reviewed a number of stars, but eventually found that I didn’t have much of a rhyme or reason for how many I awarded, and stopped doing it.
10.
Corey | January 8th, 2008 at 1:53 pm
RottenTomatoes assigns a grade or number to reviews that don’t have one based on the tone of the review. I don’t know how they do this (and would imagine it could get pretty time consuming), but it’s an option.
Hmm. Even if it wasn’t a lot of extra work — which it would definitely be — to go and assign scores for reviews that have none (like RT apparently does), I’d feel much more comfortable with the reviewers doing it themselves and not worry about me possibly mis-translating (for lack of a better word) for them.
11 Comments Add your own
1. SMH | January 7th, 2008 at 10:36 am
Not very impressed with this, How many sites give numerical reviews? IGN is the only one I know of and their reviewers are notorious with their bias.
2. Jon Haehnle | January 7th, 2008 at 11:11 am
I guess this wasn’t clear enough, but all the sites used by ComicRankings (listed on the sidebar) give scores for their reviews. While you’re right that only IGN uses the 100 point scale, everyone else cited here uses 5 stars, a 10 point scale or the letter grade (A-F) system. If you click on any of those single issues at the bottom you can actually see the scores from different sites. Sorry for any confusion. I’ve edited my post to make this clearer.
3. Bevbos | January 7th, 2008 at 11:32 am
I don’t personally think “conventional wisdom” from the internet is a superior indication of quality than sales. For the most part I agree with the rankings here, but there are a couple of items that sort of boggle the mind, unless you consider “fanboy” groupthink.
4. Bevbos | January 7th, 2008 at 11:33 am
Nonetheless, it’s interesting to see.
5. Jon Haehnle | January 7th, 2008 at 12:40 pm
Well hopefully averaging all the reviews together will reduce the impact of any fanboy groupthink. And like I said, I do realize this might not the most practical thing in the world, but if people find it useful, interesting or otherwise entertaining & informative I’m glad.
6. SMH | January 7th, 2008 at 12:46 pm
I came across harsh in my initial criticism. I think that this is a good idea but it is only really relevant to the most popular/highest selling comics eg. Ultimates, Astonishing X-men etc. With so many specialist sites (Manga/Anime/X-men) who only review books relevant to their reader. Compared to many film/game review sites that review every film/game,with the exception of IGN most of these sites review less than 10 books a week. To say a book is good/bad when only 2 sites consistently review it is inacurrate.
7. Pedro Tejeda | January 7th, 2008 at 3:16 pm
There are really little comic websites that do reviews. I can’t wait how this skewers for stuff that is not reviewed by many websites.
No one at all reviewed Pax Romana two weeks ago, but I did see a review for it that was an A.
8. Jon Haehnle | January 7th, 2008 at 3:46 pm
SMH: Don’t worry, I didn’t think your initial comment as harsh; in fact, I’ve had the same thoughts you have. I’m just going to try and make the site as comprehensive as possible, so we’ll see how that goes!
Pedro: True, and I do hope to add reviews from those kinds of sites. The more reviews in the database, the better!
9. Matthew E | January 8th, 2008 at 10:34 am
Just curious… do you have a way of coping with sites like mine, which do reviews but don’t come up with a final ranking on any kind of scale? I used to try to award each issue I reviewed a number of stars, but eventually found that I didn’t have much of a rhyme or reason for how many I awarded, and stopped doing it.
10. Corey | January 8th, 2008 at 1:53 pm
RottenTomatoes assigns a grade or number to reviews that don’t have one based on the tone of the review. I don’t know how they do this (and would imagine it could get pretty time consuming), but it’s an option.
Cool idea!
11. Jon Haehnle | January 8th, 2008 at 2:48 pm
Hmm. Even if it wasn’t a lot of extra work — which it would definitely be — to go and assign scores for reviews that have none (like RT apparently does), I’d feel much more comfortable with the reviewers doing it themselves and not worry about me possibly mis-translating (for lack of a better word) for them.
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