G.I. Joe, a Real American Hero

[Chris Vaughan]

CB STILL has this listed as WRONG.  There have been THREE DIFFERENT PUBLISHERS for this title and CB refuses to fix it?  Why?

[Steven L. Dasinger]

That is the way the creators decided to do this in the early days of CB.
Not sure of the exact criteria but it appears if the numbering is continuous, the change in publisher is put into the title notes/comments.

See 'Phantom, The (1st Series)' as another example (Gold Key, King, Charlton).

[Chris Vaughan]

And it's WRONG.  If it's an entirely different publisher, it needs to be a seperate entry

[Gregory Hecht]

Dreadstar is similar, the title was published continuously but changed publishers from Marvel to First in midstream.  The database treats this run as just a single title.  

But Tarzan starts out as Tarzan (Dell), then goes to Tarzan (Gold Key), then goes to Tarzan (DC).  I don't know for sure, but I don't think that there was a break in publication for the title, so it seems that it may be fairly analogous to GI Joe ARAH. 

I am guessing that the CB editors handle this on a more or less case-by-case basis.  To some degree, I am fine with this.  For short run indie titles that might have hopped around amongst a couple of publishers during their brief lifespan, I think having multiple titles in the database is overkill.  But for much longer runs (Tarzan, GI Joe ARAH) I can definitely understand the reasoning behind breaking things up by publisher.  

The situation for GI Joe ARAH has been in the database this way for many years now, so the rationale of "we don't want to mess up people's inventory" might be invoked here.  But now we have the "automatching" function.  

@Peter R. Bickford @Mark J. Castaneda thoughts on this?

[James H. Dunlop]

I would second the idea to separate titles based on (long running) publishers, with the noted exception for titles bouncing between limited independent publishers (mostly in the '80s/'90s.)

A search of Quality books from the '40s excludes titles such as Blackhawk and GI Combat, which had substantial runs before being bought by DC.  I would suggest separating these titles (and others, such as Tarzan that you mentioned) into separate entries for historical purposes.

On a related subject, when searching for Quality titles, I noted that many entries were under "Comic Magazines" which was the official name of the company, much as it's National instead of DC until the '70s.  You've brought all the old National titles under the DC name, and Marvel as well (Timely at least, it seems Atlas is still separate), I'd suggest doing the same for the Quality titles.  Splitting titles among the two names is confusing, and seemingly arbitrary.  If the automatching function works as intended, I don't think these changes are out-of-bounds anymore.  (I do understand the ROI for the time needed to make these changes.)

Regarding advanced searching (another of my interests, already answered in the tech forum), is "Publisher" a field for individual "issues" and not just for "titles"?

[Steven L. Dasinger]

 

5 minutes ago, James H. Dunlop said:

Regarding advanced searching (another of my interests, already answered in the tech forum), is "Publisher" a field for individual "issues" and not just for "titles"?

No. Publisher is only in the Title table. It is not in the Issue table.

Which is why it has to be referenced as ComicTitles.Publisher in an Advanced Find instead of just using an I (which indicates Issue) for I.IssueNumber

[Gregory Hecht]

36 minutes ago, James H. Dunlop said:

On a related subject, when searching for Quality titles, I noted that many entries were under "Comic Magazines" which was the official name of the company, much as it's National instead of DC until the '70s.  You've brought all the old National titles under the DC name, and Marvel as well (Timely at least, it seems Atlas is still separate), I'd suggest doing the same for the Quality titles.  Splitting titles among the two names is confusing, and seemingly arbitrary.  If the automatching function works as intended, I don't think these changes are out-of-bounds anymore.  (I do understand the ROI for the time needed to make these changes.)

As I understand it, automatching relies on matching up UPC codes.  So old National and Quality comics won't work with automatching b/c those issues won't have UPC's.   

Something like GI Joe ARAH might work since (I assume) all of those issues have UPC's (at least the newsstand editions would, at any rate).