Presumably coinciding with the official rollout of the new "DC Peel" logo on the covers of this week's titles, DC Comics has given their official website some plastic (or is that electronic?) surgery. Glancing around at this latest incarnation, here are a few initial observations on the front page...
Buttons are prominently displayed at the top linking to a Facebook directory, a Twitter directory, the DC Comics Google+ page, the DC Entertainment YouTube channel, and the RSS feed subscription. Good to see DC giving importance to these sorts of cross-promotion tools, which should help get the word out better on various projects and publicity.
Wisely, a section has been devoted to digital comics, making it much easier to find the link to the DC Comics store on ComiXology. I wouldn't have placed it halfway down the page, but at least it's more obvious than the previous "Read DC Comics" link.
There's a new Popular Characters section, featuring Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, The Flash and Aquaman, that takes you to a profile page and comment section for each of the respective characters. One would think there should also be a page for Cyborg since he's the only member of the "Big 7" Justice League that's not displayed, but since Cyborg doesn't have his own ongoing series either, I'm guessing that's part of the criteria determining popularity.
Below Popular Characters is a New Comics section that showcases covers and links for the most recent week's releases. I'm not sure why there's a design emphasis of Big 6 character profiles providing basic information better found on Wikipedia over the latest comics released, but there you go.
I do, however, like the sidebar Twitter feeds located farther down from DC creators like Scott Snyder, Jeff Lemire and Brian Buccellato (What, no @CharlesSkaggs? Aw, man...). Even better, there are handy-dandy Follow and Retweet buttons for Twitter users' convenience.
So there's some good, some not-so-good here, but the overall design layout is direct and easy to look at, which is nice. And thankfully, DC's site is still superior to Marvel's clunky and cumbersome site, which continues to aggravate me every time I try to find simple information like what comics and trades are coming out a few weeks down the road. But that's an entirely separate rant altogether...
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