ComicBookDB.com

About two years ago, I hit upon the idea of how to do a proper comic book database. At the time, no one really was putting anything out that was really as effective as it should have been and, further, no one was doing an online version... which meant that every user had to do their own manual updates all the time.

I was in the process of trying to put together a bona fide business out that hole in the market when I came across ComicBookDB.com. At the time, he had just started the site but, whereas my idea included doing all of the data entry within the "company", Chris opted to go more of a wiki route and let the users enter their own data. He put in some key differences from other databases, though, in that much of the data entry was starndardized (so "Vince Colletta" and "Vinnie Colletta" are treated as the same person) and what one person enters is accessible by anyone else. So if I uploaded the info on Fantastic Four #536, everyone else would be able to just check it off into their collection as well. It was a great set-up, but I doubted at the time whether or not the wiki-style of data entry would work.

Well, here it is, several months later, and there are now nearly 45,000 individual issues entered into the database. There are still plenty more to go (Comics.org has 85,000 entries and they're still going strong!) but I want to go on record finally as saying that this is THE best comic database I've ever seen, and I fully back Chris in his work on it.

I'm irritated, of course, that I didn't beat him to it, but he's still put forth such a fine effort that I can't help but be impressed. If you've got a collection of comics you'd like to keep track of, I heartily suggest you head on over and sign up for a free account.

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