Douglas W. McCratic

I do have those settings. Nothing appeared until I completely created the new title. The pic files were there too.

Marvel published 17 (that I know of) comics to be distributed to our troops overseas. I have most of these, and noticed a pattern while inputting some. The numbers appear random because the cover titles are all different. New Avengers guest starring the Fantastic Four New Avengers guest starring the Fantastic Four New Avengers New Avengers Letters Home New Avengers The Spirit of America New Avengers Fireline New Avengers An Army of One New Avengers The Promise New Avengers The Hero Exchange New Avengers Captain America The First Avenger Captain America The First Avenger Avengers Avengers Iron Man Thor Captain America I went to put in a single listing for all of them and once I had it entered, it was already populated with pictures and even credits. To make it weirder, I set the quantity to zero while entering it but I now have a copy of #14 with no changes from me. It was just there when the information populated. Was this title/information deleted at one point and I've stumbled onto the old data? If so, what was the thinking on breaking it up into other titles? I imagine I will keep the AAFES title for my own use but am curious.

Prime (1st Series) #4. CB indicates 2 covers, there are actually 3 with the third sharing the art for #4 but with no UPC. The series in general has this, but I thought #4 was a good example.

I know we have talked about this many times, but I just ran into an issue that I don't recall having seen before. I know that overall, CB doesn't differentiate between direct and newsstand editions. What about the situation where the direct edition has no UPC but the variant does? CB has the direct version pictured with no UPC but the newsstand has a UPC on the cover that is not on the direct at all. Is it better to make a separate entry or just add a UPC to a book that doesn't actually have one on it?

Any chance of getting a grading field in the Books category and the Magazines category? It would make it easier to indicate a problem that might make us want to replace a copy or just add some different things about a book like having it signed.

I would put your collection in some kind of order first. It can alphabetical, divided by publisher, divided by character, whatever works for you. Putting the books into CB won't be an overnight process and having some system in place will make it a lot easier to step away whether it is for a day or two or a few months and get right back into the groove when you return. Creating a space is a great thing to do if you can. Setting up on the dining room table is fine until you have to clear it off for dinner. If you can have some little corner to yourself, you can bring in a box at a time and get them entered. Assuming you are using regular comic boxes, whether the long ones or short ones, find a divider of some kind. I taped two backing boards together so they stood out above the books by a couple of inches. Put that divider at the back of the box, behind all of the books, then as you enter books, move them behind the divider. This keeps the books in a single box and in the order you started with while making it clear what has and has not been entered. Bar code scanner or no, if you're having trouble finding a book in CB, you can enter the UPC numbers by hand. It may be slow but if it's only for the random difficult to find book, it works really well. Given that your collecting took off in the 80s and 90s, it is possible that you will have some small press stuff that is either not in the system or is difficult to find. That's a great time to post on the forums to ask where they might be. Don't get discouraged! That's a lot of books to enter and will take time a regular life pushes comics out from time to time. You will get it done!

I'm slightly better rested than I was and looking over the last post, I stand by the whole thing. "Batman Detective" reprints Detective Comics issues #821-826 and based on that, it belongs under the Detective Comics entry. But in looking at the book, would anyone aside from us old dogs know where to begin? There is no "5" on the book at all. There is nothing on the exterior of the book to indicate that it is reprints any issues. I've thought too about how many new title entries that would be and hundreds is on the low end, so it's not a great idea.

I can see both sides. Honestly, as far as I'm concerned, The Great Comic Book Heroes genuinely belongs in books. Reflecting on that opinion though, I'm not sure if it is based on the fact that it's been on my bookshelf for a couple of decades, that it is a hardback book with a dustcover (technically a book), that I first found it in a library, or what. It's not based on construction. If it were, the hardbacks and TPBs collecting a story arc would need to be moved. It's now often the case that the collections gets their own title. Putting that out there, is that a good idea? As it is, we put them in the title that they reprint and that makes sense. As best I can tell, we have been putting them into the individual series' listing and numbering them as Book 1, Book 2, etc., as they are released. Stepping outside the head of a long-time user and looking in as a new user, would I ever find that Detective Comics Book 5 (according to CB) is under Detective Comics and not Batman Detective as it appears on the cover? I haven't slept for a couple of days again, so none of this may make sense at all if I were in my right mind. Let's just say I'm brainstorming with half a brain or less....

Bedtime Stories for Impressionable Children (American Mythology) annual #1-A has the wrong pic assigned. It has the same image as Annual #1-B. The correct picture is below but when I submitted it, it didn't upload.

They are comics, but so is "The Great Comic Book Heroes" which is in books. The first 53 pages of The Great Comic Book Heroes are prose with many illustrations, the remaining 134 are all comics. I honestly don't care one way or the other, my rationale was that the Harvey Horrors were issued only as TPBs and HCs even though they only reprint floppies with introductions by modern authors.

All Star Superman #1 DF has a few problems. First, the notes and credits indicate a Neal Adams cover. Second, the way I read the notes (and I may be the minority) it looks like Neal Adams signed the DF edition. If he did, I can't find evidence of it. The book pictured has a Frank Quitely cover and Grant Morrison's signature. My suggestion is "Dynamic Forces signed edition; signed by Grant Morrison; limited to 1499 numbered copies" for the notes and changing the cover credits to Frank Quitely.

In keeping with the new format with books being separated, should Harvey Horror's (sic) be moved over to the Books category? It was only issued in hardcovers and TPBs. Also, the apostrophe needs to be dropped regardless of where the title goes.

Any chance of a grading notes for books as well? Something that would be unique to our collection and not necessarily upload to the master database?

That worked! Thanks!

With the improvements in CB, magazines and books have been broken out into their own section, I love this! I'm having a problem though, some of my titles didn't move when the titles moved. Alter Ego (TwoMorrows) is my best example. I have most of these issues and since they technically don't belong in comics anymore, I tried to transfer the issues to magazines. At first, I simply moved them from comics to comics, as the target title didn't stay in the same place when I tried to make the move. I finally renamed the old location, adding "COMIC" to the end of the title so I knew which was which. Now when I try to move the items, I get the error message "constraint failed FOREIGN KEY constraint failed." Is there any way to move these other than manually moving the issues?

I am certain these two titles are one and the same but The Spirit (7th Series) #1 & #2 mistakenly has the covers to The Spirit (6th Series) #1 & #2. The Spirit (Funny Paper Book Store) has more detailed information in the individual issues, making it my choice for the title that should remain, but it should really be changed to The Spirit (7th Series) since that's where it falls in the chronology. To make matters worse, The Spirit (Funny Paper Book Store) #1 has a second printing that is indistinguishable from the first without opening it to read the indicia. Also, the credits on both 7th and FPBS need to be changed. According to Eisner's own introduction in the first issue of the FPBS series, he stated that he did roughly the first six weeks of strips then Lou Fine took over the art with Eisner's writing when the latter was drafted into the service. Initially, he smuggled out rough drawings for Fine to work over but that became too complicated and Jack Cole was brought in. He started working from Eisner's story summaries but eventually took over the full duties of writing and drawing the entire strip. Cat Yronwode contributed a history on the back cover of the 4th issue of the FPBS series. There she echoes much of what Eisner wrote in the first issue but changed the order of the artists contributions, claiming that Cole took over before Fine but I believe Eisner was correct. Fine worked on The Spirit sundays very early on and it makes sense that he would have initially taken on the dailies as well. Given that both Fine and Cole were excellent artists and both were mimicking Eisner's style, I don't know that we will ever be able to fully separate the chores on the dailies.

Deep Beyond #3/B has the cover for #3/F. I tried to submit a bigger cover to no avail. The correct cover is below.

In looking at the title "Flashback (1968-1975)," there's a lot going on here that needs attention. The publisher wasn't "Special" it was Alan Light according to the indicia. It's an American series, not Canadian as indicated in the listing. Mr. Light was based in Moline, Illinois. There are no actual cover prices but there are ads in the book to order other editions at $3 each or 4 for $10. This probably needs a price check as well. While $85 seems high for the first issue, $3 is a fantastic price for the rest of the books. I can't recall ever having seen a copy of any of these for less than $10 and in looking at eBay, the prices hover around the $10-20 mark for an average (F-VF) copy. I would think that $30 is pretty fair for a nice high grade issue although I usually saw them at conventions for $50-60.

I just looked at the update and see that Red Sonja: The Superpowers #1 has seen some changes since I submitted it. There are currently 31 variants of this book and I am confident that there are at least an additional 5 variants but I'm still working to confirm them. I used the Variation A, Printing X system to enter them because I knew of 28 variants when I started and none of those include the so called "CGC Covers" that are included in the update. Unlike Dynamic Forces, there is no such thing as a CGC variant. This is a regular copy of the book that has been graded, it's an option for ordering but is not an actual variant.

Deleting the reports in mobile appears to have worked and I have online access to my current db. I still have the option of choosing databases with no information attached to them. I tried removing the databases themselves to no avail. Do I need to do it from somewhere other than the CB site?

Progress has been made! The 2021 db appears to be correct on the mobile feature. The 2020 is unchanged. I'm attempting to delete the reports currently on mobile and start over.

We're halfway home. The 2021 database updated and is available on mobile. Still nothing on the 2020db. I changed the names of the uploads to match the databases and once I did that 2021 worked. I downloaded the new content update and I'm up to $498,515. Unfortunately, I didn't think to check the values before updating.

The Complete Collection 2021 was added last night and showed up but had no information in it apparently. I've used the "Save to Web" function repeatedly but haven't seen the updates on the Mobile Reports. The other two databases have been in use for quite awhile. I'll have to look tonight to see if they're associated with SK. Thank you!

Also, in trying to get a new report up and running, I exported all my current data and imported it into a new database. There were some issues with fields not found in the new database which I worked around, but the real concern is that my collection lost about $1500 in value in the database that I imported and when I went back to confirm the data where I had exported it, it now matches the new database. Again, probably not something I would have caught but I just tipped the scales at a value of $500,000 so it stood out. I'm now down to $498,500 or so. The most recent higher value books are there, as are the last 5 or so regular books.

I'm having some trouble using Mobile Reports. Nothing I do updates my collection and adding a new collection only gets me this message "No reports are available for that database. ComicBase Pro and Archive users can use the Save to Web command under Reports to generate these." The database I have been using was last updated on 9/22/19. I honestly probably still would not have noticed it to be so old had I not tried to look up a couple of specific recent issues. I have had Sidekick save to the web and done the same in CB under reports but nothing changes. Any ideas? Thanks!