Gregory Hecht

Dark Horse has cancelled Anansi Boys #8 and the hardcover collection of the series. They are not planning to resolicit. Issues #8/A and #8/B should be deleted from the database. The hardcover was solicited, so if that ends up in the editorial queue for a content update it should not be added into the database.

Newly added Book title National Lampoon Comics: the contents of this appear to be comics based on an Amazon preview (and the CB title description calls it an "anthology of comics"), so I suggest that this should be moved to the Comics media category. Newly added Comic title Silly Symphonies: A Companion to the Classic Cartoon Series (Walt Disney’s…): based on the cover scan, this looks to be a duplicate of the already existing comic title Walt Disney’s Silly Symphonies 1932-1935: Starring Bucky Bug and Donald Duck. Newly added Comic title Unforegettable Con, The: note that this contains a spelling error (should be Unforgettable Con, The ). Newly added Comic title New York Comic Con: What is this? Is this a convention program, a comic, or a promotional pamphlet of some sort?

The Notes field for 21 Down Deluxe Set #1 still need to be corrected.

This still needs to be done.

Marc indicated back in the fall that this was going to be taken care of (note his response to my post), so it is a little curious that this was either still hanging around or came back.

The latest content update added the title The Red Shetland Calendar to the Magazines category. As discussed previously on these boards, calendars should go in the Books category (there is a "Calendar" binding type in that category just for that kind of publication). The new comic title Autumn People (Ray Bradbury's...) was added to Comic Books. • The title should really be Autumn People (Ray Bradbury's…) [hard to see here on these boards, but the title that was added had three periods instead of the single character three dots[ellipsis]). • Everything I am finding online indicates that the title also includes "The" in it, so that needs to be fixed as well.

The database has never handled pseudonyms very well. It has been brought up multiple times over the last few years, I am hoping that @Peter R. Bickford will finally tackle this in CB 2026.

Currently AA does not support sellers posting scans of their actual copies for sale. Once long long ago (more than one year ago, probably much longer than that) I think Pete hinted on a Livestream that might change.

I would argue that the programming behind CB should be updated to sort that out properly.

Atomic Avenue might benefit from this also.

IMO it depends on the cover used in the reprint. If it is cover A, then I agree, the reprint should be #1/A-2. If it is an entirely new cover, then I would lean towards #1-2.

This week's update added Buster Brown's Safety Coloring Book to the Comic category. Does this have any comic story content? Does this belong in Comics or in Books? (Most coloring books go into the Books section, but Buster Brown did start out as a comic strip, so somebody with knowledge of the actual contents will need to weigh in on this one.) Also added was the comic title Walt Disney's Donald Duck: Frozen Gold. Is there a particular reason why this title wasn't formatted as Donald Duck: Frozen Gold (Walt Disney's...) ? [see also the discussion over in this thread]

My guess is that it would be the latter. Like you, my recollection is that the good background was indicative of being a 2nd print and that only the first printings of X-Force #1 were polybagged with a trading card. But maybe Heritage or some other authority has evidence to the contrary?

GCD indicates that the negative Cap exists for this issue but their wording avoids calling those issues second printings. GCD states 6 versions (bagged w/ five different cards, unbagged gold second print)… but then they go on to say that each has both positive and negative Cap versions which (based on their wording) means that there should actually be TWELVE variants listed. This assumes that GCD’s wording is technically precise, of course. The current CB listings don’t match the GCD description of the state of affairs for X-Force #1 and I would suggest that the use of the “2nd printing” descriptor for the negative Cap versions should be changed to something else. If the negative Cap versions aren’t indicative of second printings then they may indeed be much less common than other versions. Like you, I would expect the unbagged gold positive Cap to be less valuable than the first print versions of any type.

This is actually a situation where at least one of the issues of Zdarsky Comic News got catalogued under the Comic Book category and the update moves the entry to the Magazine category.

This week's update added the Book title Oldguy. Superhero. Based on the cover scan, it looks like this should really be titled Oldguy: Superhero . • Also, the item under this title is designated as "Single Issue Magazine". If this is a single issue magazine, why isn't it indexed under the Magazine media category? The title Dinosaur Comics Sketchbook was added to the Comics category. Does this actually contain any comic stories? If not, what media category should this go into?

I also recommend the barcode scanners that Human Computing has for sale.

Oooooh, I get it now. ? This whole time I thought that the Jupiter's Legacy issue was a copy of the Jupiter's Legacy comic book, but it is actually a magazine about the Jupiter's Legacy tv show. For situations where two publications are sold/distributed together in the same polybag (examples: Den of Geek magazines; Hero Illustrated magazines that contained exclusive comic issues), I agree with the first three bullet points and concede that the fourth bullet is a natural consequence of this approach. For situations where publications were polybagged with or without chachkis like trading cards rather than actual second publications (examples: Marvel's recent "red band" comic series; X-Force #1; a lot of the output from Topps Comics) I wouldn't be opposed to having the bag mentioned in the Item Description field. But the CB editors might prefer a more "one size fits all" policy. This merits some discussion, I think. The biggest hassle that I can foresee is whether to list more than two options for polybagged items that were distributed with chachkis (e.g., Jurassic Park #1 polybagged with cards; JP #1 unbagged but with cards; JP #1 unbagged and without cards). That could get to be a real PITA for those things that had many different things included in the bag (e.g., Superman #75). But probably the simplest way to handle it would be to say "polybagged with [stuff]" and "unbagged" leaving it to sellers to notify buyers in an appropriate field whether their unbagged copies come with [stuff] or not. At any rate, IMO this approach merits some discussion.

The particular series you posted as an example is listed as SHIELD in the database. IIRC the cover title for this series differs from the indicia title. It is instances like this one that motivated ComicBase to add the "Item Title" field to the database relatively recently. So ideally this issue should be listed under the title SHIELD but should also have a entry in the Item Title field Nick Fury and his Agents of SHIELD. If you can't find the title in the database and there is no UPC code available, try doing a Find using a key word. Ideally* the Find should return a list of all of the things that contain that word in the Title field plus all of the things that contain that same key word in the Item Title field. If you are still stuck, you can post to the boards here for help. *Because the Item Title field is so new, it is possible that not all of the comics with mismatched cover titles vs. indica titles have something listed in the Item Title field.

I hear you on that... I've seen plenty of solicitation listings for Marvel variants where no info is available beyond the comic title and issue number (no cover image, no artist name or theme). I assume retailers look at that kind of catalog listing, shake their heads, and think "Why the #%$@ should I order this for my store???"

I'm still not understanding something here that I suspect is a really basic piece of information necessary for this discussion. Are you saying that the Den of Geek #2 magazine and the Den of Geek SE #1 magazine are the same thing aside from the fact that one of these was polybagged with the copy of Jupiter's Legacy #1? In other words, if you gave me copies of both of those Den of Geek magazines and I took them out of whatever polybags they were in, threw away any copies of Jupiter's Legacy #1 that were in those polybags, and then handed those Den of Geek magazines back to you, would you be able to tell the difference between them? Are their covers the same? Are their UPCs the same? Does the indicia for one of them say "Den of Geek #2" and the other "Den of Geek Special Edition #1"? Or are the two indicia identical? (and, if the indicia are identical, what do they say?) The answers to the above help me understand whether DoG #2 and DoG SE #1 are truly duplicate listings in the database or whether the info about DoG #2 being polybagged w/ JL #1 is erroneous. (I'm still stuck on this part, so please forgive me if you feel like I am rewinding the conversation!)

From a netiquette perspective, it is preferred that you post within a thread you have started for this topic rather than start a brand new thread for the exact same topic. This is the second time that I have merged one of your posts into the original thread. As to your original question, my personal opinion as a CB user (I'm not a Human Computing employee and do not serve any formal role on the CB editorial team) is that while it is obvious which comics would qualify as a "major key" (e.g., Action Comics #1, Amazing Fantasy #1, Showcase #4, etc.) there will always be some subjectivity as to which comics constitute a major key and especially what should count as a minor key. Is Thor #337 a major key or a minor key? If you choose minor key, does that change if Beta Ray Bill gets a starring role in an MCU movie or TV show? What about Amazing Spider-Man #545? It's not expensive on the back market, but it is a key moment in Spider-Man history and continuity (even if it is not necessarily a popular moment). Wolverine's first appearance was only a cameo in Incredible Hulk #180. Presumably #181 is a major key, but is #180 a major key b/c it is the true first appearance or is it a minor key b/c it is only a couple of panels? Wolverine has a similar cameo in Incredible Hulk #182... is that a minor key or not a key? Should keys for non-super-hero comics be included? So does Bone #1 (1st printing) count as a major or minor key? What about subsequent printings of Bone #1? Do all of the first issues of EC's "New Trend" titles get labeled as major keys? What about the first issues of EC's "New Direction" titles? Is Sugar & Spike #1 a major or minor key? Do non-English comics get "key treatment" for the first appearances of One Piece, TinTin, or Asterix? What about various issues of Weekly Shonen Jump from Japan (such as #43 that introduced Naruto) or the reprints of those stories that Viz published in Shonen Jump in North America? Captain Underpants and Dog Man are really popular, so the first appearances of those characters should probably be labeled as a "key" in some way... but there are people who argue that those characters aren't enough like comic books to warrant that kind of attention (even if the CB database categorizes them under Comics rather than Books). To varying degrees, a lot of major and minor keys are in the eyes of the beholder. I wouldn't want to speak for Pete, but my guess (and I emphasize that this is a **guess**) is that with everything that the CB editorial/corrections team needs to field each week, adding editorial decisions about what is (or is not) a major or minor key is something that would eat up a ton of the team's time without a lot of "value added" to the CB product. YMMV, of course.

I am not sure that I am understanding this. Did the publisher put out both a polybagged and an unpolybagged edition of issue #2? • If so, why wouldn’t those be recorded as #2 and #2/A? Cataloging the polybagged version of #2 as SE1 when presumably the indicia says #2 seems unnecessarily confusing to me. Do it as SE2 if you must rather than 2/A unless the number in the indicia really says #1. • If not, I think the practice for CB is that the two publications in the bag get listed separately in the database. If the ancillary publication (in this case, the issue of Jupiter’s Legacy) is identical to the JL issue that was sold separately from Den of Geek then so be it. If it is unique in some way then it is a variant issue of JL and gets treated as such under the appropriate Jupiter’s Legacy comic title. As for how to list (i.e. what selling price to use) an unopened polybagged edition on AA, I would think you should be able to charge a premium as compared to selling a high grade copy of just the Den of Geek issue removed from the polybag. As I understand it, CB gets its valuations primarily from AA listings & transactions and from Heritage, and by spot checking against eBay and other sort when users call out specific individual items. In the absence of any data, I think CB defaults to cover price as the valuation. So for something relatively unusual like an unopened polybagged issue of Den of Geek, do some homework before listing such as checking eBay listings and completed sales. I am sure that @Mark J. Castaneda will correct me if I am wrong in my discussion above.

At one point long ago I did end up accidentally scanning a UPC number into the Quantity in Stock field. I discovered shortly afterwards that my collection had an insanely high number of issues in total, so I did a search for items with Quantity > 1 and quickly found the culprit. A few years later I had another instance where I was looking for Quantity > 1 and discovered that I must have made the same or similar error at some point with another comic after the incident above. I don't recall exactly, but I think the program didn't use the erroneous quantity in any of the file statistics or anything like that. So I suspect that somewhere along the line the program already has a feature that either recognizes or ignores blatantly crazy Quantity in Stock values.

There seem to be a number of titles in the database where the "Walt Disney's" portion of the title is not relegated to parentheses (click over to this page, then scroll down about halfway to see some examples). So many of those titles have been in the database for so long that I assume there is reluctance to make the correction, but it appears that situation may have created an opening for new titles to "continue the tradition" since there are also a bunch that are relatively recent. While we're on the topic, it appears that there are two comic book titles that are missing the apostrophe in "Walt Disney's..." Those titles should probably be corrected.