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Please, Please, Please Break Spider-Man Comics Weekly into Multiple Titles!


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TL;DR
I’d love to see the Marvel UK Spider-Man Comics Weekly comic broken apart as it’s an all-in-one container title where ancillary titles continues its numbering and that makes finding any of those titles a nightmare 💀 -- because the various issue indicias don’t list a title name and the ComicBase title description doesn’t break down any of the contained titles (and I'm not advocating for that).

I've been avoiding posting corrections and bringing up issues like these because I feel like TPTB at CB are finding me a PITA but the following  problem bit me in the butt again today as I was trying to find Super Spider-Man #277.

When I initially tried to find Super Spider-Man #277 to enter it into CB, I didn't have a label maker so I couldn't put a label on it. After getting a label maker, I was going to add one to the issue, so I had to find it again in CB. There's only one obscure way to find it in the CB database and that way is below the radar of anyone looking for the title. Since I was unaware that I could have queried the Notes field to find a note that identified the issue where the name changed (which seems like a roundabout way to do it), I, instead, went to http://comics.org to look it up and track it back to the original title, Spider-Man Comics Weekly, to find the issue catalogued there. I found it frustrating to leave ComicBase, go to an unaffiliated web site to gather information, and return to ComicBase so that I could find this title but I would have found it equally frustrating to have to go to Find -> Item Fields -> Notes on the off chance that it was identified and identified under that field.

Back in January, 2022, I contacted Pete to alert him about this and we had an email exchange about this problem. I suspect his suggested solution fell through the cracks, and that's okay, I'm sure there's bigger fish to fry in CB Land, but it's issues like this where I find ComicBase the most frustrating and it all has to do with organizing data -- which should be ComicBase's strongest suit.

So, after finding the title again and putting a label on it -- it looks crazy -- the title reads Super Spider-Man #277 (remember, no title in the indicia inside) yet the label reads Spider-Man Comics Weekly #277 -- that seems counter-intuitive to any kind of sorting. [see attached image].

50519579_SuperSpider-Man277-CoverwithLabel.thumb.jpg.e9b3e36c413a6e9140524c5444506de7.jpg

Thanks for reading this far! Here's the original email exchange between Pete and I on this issue:

Walt to Pete (Jan 26, 2022):

Thanks for considering my question today in the LiveStream. So here's the problem. I wanted to index my issues of Marvel UK's Super Spider-Man and Captain Britain comic. While it has indicia, there is no title, issue number, or week of release. Everything that identifies the issue is on the cover only. For example:

SUPER SPIDER-MAN AND CAPTAIN BRITAIN
No. 245
Week Ending Oct. 19, 1977

I tried to look it up in ComicBase to no avail. I didn't want to add a new title and thought that it may have continued its numbering from a previous title but there was no way for me to figure that out in ComicBase. I went to comics.org where I looked up Super Spider-Man. There was a lot of merging with other titles and numbering continuation.

The GCD lists the following under Super Spider-Man:
Cover title: "Super Spider-Man with the Super-Heroes" issues 158 to 198.
Cover title: "Super Spider-Man and the Titans" issues 199 to 230.
Cover title: "Super Spider-Man and Captain Britain" issues 231 to 253.
Cover title: "Super Spider-Man" issues 254 to 310.

All of these issues were indexed in ComicBase under Spider-Man Comics Weekly and double-entered again under Super Spider-Man and the Titans for the issues in that run (probably because the indexer didn't know where to look).

This problem ties into what you were talking about in today's live stream.

The following titles are all listed under Spider-Man Comics Weekly in ComicBase. Obviously, I don't have many of these, but this is an extreme example of cover titles changing while numbering is continued.

Spider-Man Comics Weekly #1-157
Super Spider-Man with the Super-Heroes #158-198
Super Spider-Man and the Titans #199-230
Super Spider-Man and Captain Britain #231-253 ( no title, number or date in the indicia)
Super Spider-Man #254-310
Spider-Man Comic #311-333
The Spectacular Spider-Man Weekly #334-375
Spider-Man and Hulk Weekly #376-424
Spider-Man and Hulk Team-Up #425-449
Super Spider-Man TV Comic #450-499
Spider-Man #500-552
Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends #553-578
Spider-Man #579-633
The Spider-Man Comic #634-650
Spidey Comic #651-666

Just something to consider while you are thinking about cross-referencing.

Pete to Walt (Jan 26, 2022):

Good grief! 
 
Can you send me a shot of the cover/indicia page just so I can try to wrap my head around this one?
 
-Pete

Walt to Pete (Jan 27, 2022):

Hi, Pete--
 
I've included 4 scans: Cover and indicia page for the first issue of Super-Spider-Man and Captain Britain #231 and the same for the last issue #253. I also looked through each issue page-by-page and saw no other publishing information. It is possible the other titles have a more robust indicia? Possibly, but I don't have access to those.
 
Thanks again,
Walt Grogan

1943103723_SuperSpider-ManandCaptainBritain231-Cover.thumb.jpg.ba06cd790b06a983f22d19ab2acffb5c.jpg785035562_SuperSpider-ManandCaptainBritain231-Indicia.thumb.jpg.1cd8cd93d0ca9e40031492de07f2660a.jpg

1790861720_SuperSpider-ManandCaptainBritain253-Cover.thumb.jpg.49179dd428ac349a49b39d828cfbfbdb.jpg1736498670_SuperSpider-ManandCaptainBritain253-Indicia.thumb.jpg.2d3db44e436b5c41e40de6583bd0dccd.jpg

Pete to Walt (Jan 27, 2022):

Wow—this is probably the most extreme version I’ve seen of the British style of “let’s just rename the poorly selling title every so often while keeping the number scheme going”, combined with an apparent allergic reaction to proper indicia or even trade dress. I wonder if the transitional issues included any context clues, e.g. The Rover announcing on the cover for a few issues “Includes The Whizzer” (or whatever comic was being folded into it at the time).
 
My gut reaction is that it ought t be busted into multiple titles—I guess it would depend on how frequently the transition happened, and how well known the overall series was to Brits, though. If it oscillated every several issues to a nearby name, I’d be inclined to overlook it (the “Captain America/Captain America and the Falcon” example), or if the title name was cyclical and relatively well-known (The Peter Parker/Spectacular Spider-Man example). As an American, however, I have to say I’d have had a hard time finding this one without some sort of title change.
 
-Pete


Here's the cover for Super Spider-Man #277 as well as its indicia page.

459356230_SuperSpider-Man277.thumb.jpg.ba7f5149323a883b1fd264bd345e4b9c.jpg1239908736_SuperSpider-Man277-Indicia.thumb.jpg.87ee3bac3c1149fcf0b7f16bc82ad80e.jpg

As I said, I'd love for this title to be broken apart. And please, as always, take my criticism in the spirit its given which is to help, in a small way, to help improve the data in CB.

Thanks for your consideration,
Walt

 

 

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