I’ll be honest, even though I was in my comic book sabbatical phase when Marvel fired up it’s Ultimate line of books, I was still aware of their existence and not terribly fond of the idea.  The idea to reboot your setting by creating a new line of titles that exist in their own continuity, while at the same time maintaining the books in your existing continuity, just seemed like one of those bad ideas that are unique to the comic book medium.  Then again, having a dozen flavors of Batman and X-Men each month also strikes me as a bad thing, so it’s obvious I don’t think like a publisher.

A few weeks back, for reasons I can’t quite fathom, I made the spontaneous decision to start reading the Ultimate line of comics.  In it’s entirety.  

Its been a while since I’ve posted an update about the status of the site and the database.  So, I’m going to quickly run through some of the things we’ve been up to at OpenCBDB.  The tables for Titles, Volumes, Publishers, and Issues are setup and we’ve filled them with some data (the combined collections of myself and Doug Von Doom along with the issues we don’t have).  We have about 35, 000 issues in about 1,000 different titles (with 1100 volumes).  We’ve tried to put a few creators out there (about 3300) with their credits (applied to different roles on the 35K issues for about 68K credits).  We’ve only been able to put up about 3500 covers so far, but we’re adding more every day.

If you’re a registered user, you’ll be able to track your collections online.  Once logged in, on each issue, you’ll be able to add issues into your library.  When they’re in your library you can view a nice list of the issues you have, AND a checklist for the issues you’re missing.  This way you know what issues you need to track down.  And if adding issues into your Library one at a time is too slow, from your Library menu you’ll be able add your whole runs to your library at once!  Just pick the title, and start typing your issues in.

You’ll also notice that if you’re a registered user, you’ll be able to add and edit the information in the OpenCBDB.  You’ll be able to add new Titles, Volumes, Publishers, Issues, etc!

And we’ve got tons more ideas in the wings.

Hey.  Welcome to OpenCBDB.

One of the things that has bugged me about nearly ever single Comic Collecting software is the reporting tools and how they help in actual comic collecting.  You know, the collecting of comics.  Nearly every comic con I’ve been to I’ve seen tons of collectors rummaging through tables and tables of back issue boxes.  They’ve all had their notebooks or crumbled pieces of paper with a list of the issues they’re missing.  They all look pretty much similar:

Amazing Spider-man

365, 366, 367, 368, 369,…

So one thing I’ve looked for in every comic collecting software is the ability to make this list for me.  I put in the comics I have. It knows the ones I need. Right?  Seems pretty simple.  I’ve tried most of the comic collecting software available for the past 10 years.  Nothing.  I’ve submitted this feature request to nearly every one of them.

I made a quick web DB for my friends to use on my personal web server.  It was pretty neat.  We used it to keep track of our inventories and we built it with the features we wanted.  Then it crashed.  So we figured, if we have to re-write it, might as well open it up for everyone.

One of the problems we had was inputting all the base data.  Most sites online don’t allow for the ability to link or scrape their information.  That’s another reason why we made this site.  It’s open for anyone to do anything they want with the information.  We’re all fans of comics.  This info is the same to all of us.  Who cares who scrapes it or uses it.