CBR.com has been redesigned, rebranded
At least one of the top rotating stories on the new site is about comics. And there are still previews and so on. And the forums are still there, with, predictably old timers moaning, managing editor Albert Ching manfully trying to answer questions and one wag posting, “Jonah Weiland sold his comic book site, and what happened next will shock you!” Readers are not happy with the new look for the moment, complaining about industry standard things like large images and responsive design.
Also, the old Comicbookresources had awful pop up ads of late that froze my browser and sent bats flying across my screen. They seem to be waiting in the attic while the new redesign shakes out, but if the new look enables to site to do away with those kind of ads, than it’s all for the best.
It’s been a rough couple of days during the transition to the new site. For the first day or so I couldn’t access the site using the the full URL, only via CBR.com, many images were or still are distorted or low-res, and the site’s layout seemed to change a number of times in a very short period of time. That said, many of the major bugs seem to have been squashed.
One of my major issues with the site now is just how painfully generic it looks. I would have almost confused it with the current Comic Book design if I wasn’t looking close enough. Also, Share is not a great typeface for headers, or really anything for that matter, as it looks too plain and cheap in my opinion.
Some particularly disappointing design choices aside, the site feels modern and works well enough on mobile devices. It’ll be interesting to see, as Heidi mentions in the piece above, how they handle ads and special columns once they clean up the core experience and roll out new features.