What differentiates a comic from a book or a trade paperback or graphic novel?

[Patrick O’Malley]

This question has come up a lot lately for me.  

A trade paperback reprints a set of comic books.

A graphic novel is a stand alone story in a large format.

A comic book is a soft cover book of illustrated panels usually with word balloons.

Can anyone elaborate or refine these definitions?

Thank you,

Pat

[Gregory Hecht]

Is your question in regards to general, conversational definitions of those terms or is it in terms of how ComicBase specifically handles these definitions?  

[James H. Dunlop]

Just updated to 2022 after a year's break.  I'm curious about this subject as well (regarding how ComicBase handles them.)

I had a couple of titles that apparently changed from "Comic Book" to "Magazine" and my previous inventory appears to have been deleted in the change.

One specific group of titles is the DC Who's Who from the '80s (Who’s Who: The Definitive Directory of the DC Universe) and related titles (Star Trek and Legion.)  The ones from 1984-1988 were comic books, while the 1992 and 1993 updates were "loose-Leaf Format".  I understand the later ones being differentiated from comics, but not the original series.  (The same thing happened to the Marvel Handbook versions.)  It doesn't look like a lot 

Likewise, books vs. comics.  The Who's Who omnibus is listed as a book, while it reprints comics (at least I'll call them comics.)  But the Complete Chester Gould's Dick Tracy, which collects comic strips, is a comic book.  I understand if the first matched the conversion from comic to magazine.  Are all comic strip collections comic books?  (Such as the Complete Calvin and Hobbes?)

Just trying to understand as I check/re-enter my collection.  I'm sure I'll have more questions/inquiries as I have more time to spend on this now.  (The benefits to me, and the detriments to you, of my retirement! 🙂 )

(Sorry, rambling a bit.  From what I can tell, the overall inventory is greatly enhanced and will allow me to enter a lot more.  Not sure why there's 5000 entries for the New York Times, though.)

 

[Steven L. Dasinger]

Comic Books are any Title that tells a story using pictures and words. This would include Comic stories and Comic Strips.
Books are Titles that tell a story using mainly text (there can be illustration), are about comics (various 'Encyclopedia would fall under this as would Overstreet guides), Art books, regular Novels (normal prose book), etc.
Magazines are generally periodicals with articles. It was decided that the various  Who's Who belonged here).

These are general guidelines. There may be titles in the 'wrong' location just because they haven't yet been identified as belonging somewhere else.

[Steven L. Dasinger]

By the way, you mentioned it deleted your inventory. This should not have happened. Even if a Title was moved to Books or Magazines, it won't (or at least shouldn't) delete or move anything you have qty in stock >= 1.

PS Welcome to the retirement club...

[James H. Dunlop]

While I don't agree with it in this case, I understand the logic behind the decision.

I'm looking in my "TPB-HC" database (I've separated my collection for now into five databases), and it seems there's dual entries for some, such as the Batman: Cover to Cover book.  Do I have a "comic book" entry because I had entered it previously (or perhaps manually entered a new item - I don't remember.)?

I'm pretty sure I had Who's Who in my comic inventory, and the qty changed from 1 to zero after the long update.

Other questions on "how to", I'll shift to the technical forum for those when I'm ready.

Thanks for the quick reply.

[Steven L. Dasinger]

One more thing. When you process an Update, the 'complete window can have a 'View unrecognized items' like that will show Titles and/or Issues in your database that are not in the master database.

This can help you decided where titles with the same name belong.

[Gregory Hecht]

4 hours ago, James H. Dunlop said:

While I don't agree with it in this case, I understand the logic behind the decision.

I'm looking in my "TPB-HC" database (I've separated my collection for now into five databases), and it seems there's dual entries for some, such as the Batman: Cover to Cover book.  Do I have a "comic book" entry because I had entered it previously (or perhaps manually entered a new item - I don't remember.)?

I'm pretty sure I had Who's Who in my comic inventory, and the qty changed from 1 to zero after the long update.

Other questions on "how to", I'll shift to the technical forum for those when I'm ready.

Thanks for the quick reply.

If you have inventory in a Comic title and that title gets moved to another category (such as Books), then the content update will create the title under Books *and* leave your original Comic title (and its inventory) in place.  I agree with Steven that content updates shouldn't normally delete your inventory, even in cases where the Media category for a particular title has changed.  

So in your case, it sounds like you should have both a Comic title (with inventory) and a Magazine title (with no inventory) for Batman: Cover to Cover (for example).  Similarly, if you did have comic book Who's Who inventory in your database, then you should have both a Who's Who title in Comics and another Who's Who title in Magazines.  

You can leave things that way if you want to, but it will result in at least two potentially negative consequences:  (1) the version of the title under the incorrect Media type will never get updated, including valuation data; and (2) you won't be able to sell your inventory that is listed under the incorrect Media type on Atomic Avenue.  

To avoid these problems, you'll want to get your inventory under the correct Book title and delete the old, obsolete Comic title.  There are two ways to do this.  

Method 1:

On 12/12/2019 at 7:25 PM, Steven L. Dasinger said:

Go to the Comic Books Title that was 'duplicated' in its now correct location in Magazines or Books.

You can use Menu item Edit->Change Media Type.

Select the Media you want to move it to.

It will tell you that Title exists and do you want to move the Issues to it. Yes, you do.

However, this will DUPLICATE the Issues in the correct location for all the Issues you own.

You can delete the Duplicate you DON'T own to keep information.

 

Method 2 (assuming that you have inventory only in the old title entry and no inventory the new title entry):

•  Go to the new title entry (the one where you have no inventory).  Use cntrl-T to get a pop-up window that will allow you to modify that title.  On the screen for modifying that particular title, you should see a button that allows you to delete that title.  
•  After deleting that title, go to the old title entry (the one that has your inventory in it).  Use Menu item Edit --> Change Media Type to change your old title to the new, correct media category.  (Note that if you are changing a Comic title to a Book title, you might need to edit things so that the individual items are not part of a numbered series [depending on whether or not that Book title is a numbered series, of course]).  
•  The next time you run a content update, the update should update the title that has your inventory (which is now listed under the correct Media type) with the most recent information.