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A good example of the problems that can be created is this past week's Die!namite #4. That issue (similar to other Dynamite and IDW comics) often have a cover gallery that will explicitly give a cover letter (Die!namite 4 lists "peanuts homage cover art" as cover H, but it wasn't listed in the database, and variant H was already used for one of the exclusives. In that case, I'll list the letter from the cover gallery in the notes when I submit, and leave the variant letter alone.

Store variants and online store variants are tricky for us because our solicitation data mainly comes from Diamond and Lunar distribution who don't care them. Thank goodness for our user community who send in data for variants we aren't aware of. Unfortunately, we can have users assign different store variants than others possibly messing up what you might have set yourself for a variant. Not sure there's a good way to get around this, you might want to email support@comicbase.com about a store variant you might have assigned just so we know not override it if a different store variant it comes in.

If it is an older comic, the odds that two missing variants would be submitted in the same week are probably low. But for new and fairly recent comics, I can see this as a concern. You can always post on these boards or email support, that gives Marc, Pete, or somebody else at HC to communicate back to you if they will be using a different variant designation than the one that you selected.

A more in-depth discussion of UPC's, Alt-UPC's, ISBN's (including difference between ISBN-10 and ISBN-13) might help clear up some confusion. In addition to the newsstand vs direct market UPC differences for the same issue (perhaps not a universal thing for all publishers, but definitely there for post-"Spidey face box" Marvel for instance), it appears a large number of floppy comics in the database show ISBN's which I would expect to apply only to books, or at least comics bound in a book format. Are these auto-generated based on the UPC input? Also, it appears the ISBN-10 format is generally what is stored in the database, which is not necessarily the same as the ISBN-13 minus the first three characters. The more I'm typing, the more I'm thinking this may not be as much of a general-interest topic as I was originally thinking. But perhaps a simple discussion of how those fields are populated in the database, and how to use that information to find those items in the real world (when not in stock on Atomic Avenue, of course) might be useful. P.S. Thank you to Greg for the advice above.

For deletions, the best bet would be to either email support or post on these boards. The correction submission function from your database doesn't really handle deletions... and deletions often require some sort of explanation anyway, so best to do that via email or public board posting. Generally speaking, go ahead and create the entry in CB and submit. But, if you are entering something that is complicated for some reason, then posting to the boards can generate some helpful discussion. Also, if you can't find a fairly common title, it might be best to post on the boards for assistance before you create an entry. Hypothetical example: you can't find the 1970's Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-Man series... posting on the boards will result in somebody pointing out that the title is already in the database as Spectacular Spider-Man, The. Usually the reason behind that occurrence is that the existing cover file is larger than the cover file that you want to upload. The fix is to email the cover to support. Good rule of thumb: if the thing that needs correcting is complex and/or nuanced, please post on the boards! Even though these boards aren't necessarily a high traffic location on the interwebs, there is a pretty good pool of expertise here (from both HC and from CB users) that things often get sorted out pretty quickly. 😁