I was speaking the other day with someone whose opinion about such things I hold in almost higher regard than anyone else, about the term "African-American." I know that throughout the blog I have used this term as a catch-all for Black people in the United States, but it was pointed out to me that there are a few concerns with that term, and that usage. First, not all Black people in the U.S. are of African descent. The term thus erases the experiences of POC from numerous Caribbean, Central American, South American nations. Secondly, it has some difficult resonances to slavery, a problem that should certainly be addressed, but not necessarily linguistically attached to an entire cultural group.
A short delineation of the conversation, but enough, I think. I'm going to spend the next little while seeing if I can comb through the blog and change "African-American" for "Black." I feel like it's better to revise the posts and avoid potentially insulting someone than to leave it as a historical artifact of language.
Showing posts with label metadata. Show all posts
Showing posts with label metadata. Show all posts
Nov 24, 2016
The 40 Years of Comics Project - Metadata Post
A few thoughts on my database software.
I've used the Collectorz.com software for years now. When I worked at Sunrise Records in London, Ontario, every now and again we would get a dewy-eyed person come in with a list. It would inevitably turn out to be a list of CDs or video tapes (it was some time ago) that had been lost in a theft or in a catastrophic house disaster. The lists were for insurance purposes. It may come as a shock, but back then, I didn't have nearly the same amount of stuff I have now, let alone the extensive collections I have. But some years later, after the store had closed down, I realized that my comic collection was indeed that significant a collection that I should think about getting it insured.
Yeah. Looked into that for all of three milliseconds, saw how much it would cost on a monthly basis, and decided to simply be very careful about playing with matches in the house.
The next best thing, I thought, would be to have a comprehensive list of my comics. My Dad got me a copy of an early Collectorz, and thus began my database. I think I've lost the data once in about 10 years, but I'm a much more careful computer used now.
The layout of this program is great. Neat, simple, customizable, but not to the point of ridiculous minutiae (at least, not that I've yet discovered). The above picture is how I usually have the window organized. This gives me a good look at all of the relevant data, both through the list view and the cover view. Increasingly important these days is that little eye icon which, if bright, means I've read the comic already.
The view is nicely manipulable, however. Here's a few examples:
No list view isn't great, but it does give a nice view of the cover. I kind of wish more of the information was available on this view. That big empty space seems a bit wasted to me. Ah well.
List view isn't the only option, though. One can also have a number of different views of the comics while retaining the detail window at the bottom:
The card view is one I don't use very often. I find it clunky, and the information provided on the card not be quite as useful as that which is available in the list view.
When I don't have the thumbnail gallery of covers up, I have the cover flow, which lets you scan through nice-sized representations of your collection, with the comic whose details are displayed taking center stage. It's nice, though of the three ways I prefer to have the collection displayed, this is the least useful. But it looks pretty. Especially when you full screen it:
And that's the program I use, and some of the ways it looks. Check out Collectorz.com. They do database software for all kinds of media collections, and they're pretty great.
Apr 22, 2016
Reminding You...
Mar 14, 2016
The 40 Years of Comics Project - Metadata Post
That's actually a slightly-inaccurate title - the metadata I'm considering today is for the blog as a whole, though since a vast majority of my posts are from the 40 Years project, I think we can forgive a slight inaccuracy.
These are a series of screenshots of my statistics pages, taken today, March 14, 2016, around 10:45. While I'm sure that a good half, if not more, of the hits on my site are bots of some sort, there's at least a few actual people who visit. I'll be considering the data from the human perspective for the most part.
First picture is my "all-time" stats. This one is likely the least indicative of my 40 Years posts, in that my post from many moons ago of links to annotations to Morrison and Quitely's All-Star Superman has a kind of ridiculous amount of hits. I'm always happy to direct people to particular information, but very little of that particular information is of my own making.
Here's where things start to be a bit more relevant, I think. I'm fascinated by where particular hits come from - the US, of course, is one of my biggest sources of traffic - this makes sense given the vast amount of English-speakers in the country, and given the vast amount of robo-hits that probably come from that country. It's cool to see the map showing places like Brazil and China as having interacted with the blog, though. Regardless of what kind of hits I'm getting, the reach of the blog is in some ways global. That's kind of cool.
In weekly hits, Russia supplants Canada (c'mon, home team, represent!). Part of me feels like I'm playing some strange game of Risk with this blog.
And Russia moves into the lead for daily hits.
And, finally, hits for the 2 hour period leading up to the screenshots. US, Canada, Russia - My blog favours the Northern hemisphere, it seems.
I'm not sure what to do with this information really. If my blog were more concerned with geopolitical ideas, or languages, this kind of data could help with determining content. But for a blog that concentrates on comics, where people are reading from is secondary to the fact that people are reading the blog at all! I suppose I could start offering translations of my posts, but having tried to give a speech in French at a wedding once having used online translation software, I am strongly disinclined to try.
These are a series of screenshots of my statistics pages, taken today, March 14, 2016, around 10:45. While I'm sure that a good half, if not more, of the hits on my site are bots of some sort, there's at least a few actual people who visit. I'll be considering the data from the human perspective for the most part.
First picture is my "all-time" stats. This one is likely the least indicative of my 40 Years posts, in that my post from many moons ago of links to annotations to Morrison and Quitely's All-Star Superman has a kind of ridiculous amount of hits. I'm always happy to direct people to particular information, but very little of that particular information is of my own making.
Here's where things start to be a bit more relevant, I think. I'm fascinated by where particular hits come from - the US, of course, is one of my biggest sources of traffic - this makes sense given the vast amount of English-speakers in the country, and given the vast amount of robo-hits that probably come from that country. It's cool to see the map showing places like Brazil and China as having interacted with the blog, though. Regardless of what kind of hits I'm getting, the reach of the blog is in some ways global. That's kind of cool.
And Russia moves into the lead for daily hits.
And, finally, hits for the 2 hour period leading up to the screenshots. US, Canada, Russia - My blog favours the Northern hemisphere, it seems.
I'm not sure what to do with this information really. If my blog were more concerned with geopolitical ideas, or languages, this kind of data could help with determining content. But for a blog that concentrates on comics, where people are reading from is secondary to the fact that people are reading the blog at all! I suppose I could start offering translations of my posts, but having tried to give a speech in French at a wedding once having used online translation software, I am strongly disinclined to try.
Dec 24, 2015
The 40 Years of Comics Project: Weird Metadata Post #4
Some thoughts on storage.
The picture below is likely relatively familiar-looking to many:
That's an oldish picture of my collection. The first three rows are now drawer boxes, making access to the early letters of the alphabet so much more convenient. The pity is that my local stores have stopped carrying the boxes, so the latter half of the alphabet still languishes in inaccessibility. The question of how one organizes a collection is very often contingent on how one stores a collection, so I thought it would be interesting to put the microscope to my own storage habits.
The above, of course, is the highest tier of storage. Sort of. I suppose the first thing one needs in order to store a large collection is a large storage space. Before we moved here to Calgary, this particular section of the collection was stored in our garage - in my database comics are still listed as to whether they're stored in the garage or in the basement. I've been fortunate in our current living situation to be able to keep the comics a little more conveniently. These boxes are in a storage room in the basement, and the Active collection is in the basement proper, affectionately referred to as my "man cave."
Though boxes are the most common storage method, they're definitely not the only one. My supervisor at school has all of his Archie comics on bookshelves, bagged, boarded, edge out. I'm not sure which is a more effective storage method. While the shelved comics are easily accessed, one can't see the covers without pulling them off the shelf. With the boxes, there's a little heavy lifting involved (at least until I fix that or get more drawer boxes), but I can more easily see the covers of each issue once the box is open.
One thing that one does need to keep in mind when boxing comics, however, is not to fill the box too tightly, otherwise flipping through the box becomes difficult. I think long boxes are designed to hold 250-300 comics, though I'd recommend only filling them 90%.
Inside the boxes, there's another two options: bagged or unbagged. My snobbishness is going to come through and say that serious collectors would never leave a collection unbagged. If you've ever picked up an old comic, up at a cottage, or from a garage sale, you'll notice the roughness of the interior pages, the fade of the colour. While some of this can be attributed to age and poor materials, some can also be attributed to exposure. Sealed within a bag, there's less chance of a comic deteriorating like this. I've recently come across a couple of Archie comics that must have been stored this way, or at least isolated from their environment, as they're 40 year old comics that feel like they just came off the presses.
With bags, I have four regular sizes that I use often, and a couple of irregular sizes that are required less-often. Comics are divided into three ages, generally: the Gold, the Silver, and the Modern. Occasionally the late 70s and early 80s are the Bronze age, and after that the Dark age. These delineations are in some ways determined by the size and shape of the comic. Golden age comics are about an inch wider than Modern ones, and about a half inch wider than Silver. Thus, one needs different sized boards and bags for each era. Magazine bags and boards are, of course, even larger, though, at least in my case, are used less often. I also have some tabloid-sized bags, for such things as Treasury Editions or oversize comics, and some digest/manga bags, for the smaller pieces. I tend to try to keep Silver Age bags and boards around, as they fit both Silver and Modern age comics, and I get Golden Age comics very seldom.
The last storage-related consideration is the divider cards, and these bridge the storage aspect of the collection and the organization aspect. I've only recently put these cards into my Active collection, and I'm still working my way through the Storage collection. The question these dividers raise is how many comics have to be in the collection for a series to qualify for its own section, rather than being placed in the Miscellaneous section of each letter. I recently re-read my Starriors series, which is only four issues long, but I have such affection for it that I gave it its own area. I'm sure there's comics in the collection that have more than four issues but are still Miscellaneoused.
So that's that. Maybe in another post on organizational stuff, I'll have a look at my graphic novels and magazine, and my other ephemera.
The picture below is likely relatively familiar-looking to many:
That's an oldish picture of my collection. The first three rows are now drawer boxes, making access to the early letters of the alphabet so much more convenient. The pity is that my local stores have stopped carrying the boxes, so the latter half of the alphabet still languishes in inaccessibility. The question of how one organizes a collection is very often contingent on how one stores a collection, so I thought it would be interesting to put the microscope to my own storage habits.
The above, of course, is the highest tier of storage. Sort of. I suppose the first thing one needs in order to store a large collection is a large storage space. Before we moved here to Calgary, this particular section of the collection was stored in our garage - in my database comics are still listed as to whether they're stored in the garage or in the basement. I've been fortunate in our current living situation to be able to keep the comics a little more conveniently. These boxes are in a storage room in the basement, and the Active collection is in the basement proper, affectionately referred to as my "man cave."
Though boxes are the most common storage method, they're definitely not the only one. My supervisor at school has all of his Archie comics on bookshelves, bagged, boarded, edge out. I'm not sure which is a more effective storage method. While the shelved comics are easily accessed, one can't see the covers without pulling them off the shelf. With the boxes, there's a little heavy lifting involved (at least until I fix that or get more drawer boxes), but I can more easily see the covers of each issue once the box is open.
One thing that one does need to keep in mind when boxing comics, however, is not to fill the box too tightly, otherwise flipping through the box becomes difficult. I think long boxes are designed to hold 250-300 comics, though I'd recommend only filling them 90%.
Inside the boxes, there's another two options: bagged or unbagged. My snobbishness is going to come through and say that serious collectors would never leave a collection unbagged. If you've ever picked up an old comic, up at a cottage, or from a garage sale, you'll notice the roughness of the interior pages, the fade of the colour. While some of this can be attributed to age and poor materials, some can also be attributed to exposure. Sealed within a bag, there's less chance of a comic deteriorating like this. I've recently come across a couple of Archie comics that must have been stored this way, or at least isolated from their environment, as they're 40 year old comics that feel like they just came off the presses.
With bags, I have four regular sizes that I use often, and a couple of irregular sizes that are required less-often. Comics are divided into three ages, generally: the Gold, the Silver, and the Modern. Occasionally the late 70s and early 80s are the Bronze age, and after that the Dark age. These delineations are in some ways determined by the size and shape of the comic. Golden age comics are about an inch wider than Modern ones, and about a half inch wider than Silver. Thus, one needs different sized boards and bags for each era. Magazine bags and boards are, of course, even larger, though, at least in my case, are used less often. I also have some tabloid-sized bags, for such things as Treasury Editions or oversize comics, and some digest/manga bags, for the smaller pieces. I tend to try to keep Silver Age bags and boards around, as they fit both Silver and Modern age comics, and I get Golden Age comics very seldom.
The last storage-related consideration is the divider cards, and these bridge the storage aspect of the collection and the organization aspect. I've only recently put these cards into my Active collection, and I'm still working my way through the Storage collection. The question these dividers raise is how many comics have to be in the collection for a series to qualify for its own section, rather than being placed in the Miscellaneous section of each letter. I recently re-read my Starriors series, which is only four issues long, but I have such affection for it that I gave it its own area. I'm sure there's comics in the collection that have more than four issues but are still Miscellaneoused.
So that's that. Maybe in another post on organizational stuff, I'll have a look at my graphic novels and magazine, and my other ephemera.
Nov 25, 2015
The 40 Years of Comics Project: Weird Metadata Post #3
Apparently my database software can make graphs. This is endlessly amusing for me, and I'm going to share them with you.
Not all of my comics have all of the same data entered in the database. Some stories don't have titles, for instance. Or the writer and artist may not have been recorded in the comic. But most have Cover Years. It makes sense that 2001 and 2002 are the most represented, as that's when I had my store. But 1987 comes in after that, my X-Men, Avengers, Animal Man, didn't have to pay for my own food days.
Ha. Animal Man is the only character who makes enough appearances through the database to merit mention. What this actually says is that I was far more caring about keeping track of my Animal Man appearances than any other character in the collection. This'll be an interesting graph to run once all of the comics are properly indexed.
No surprise which genre wins out in my collection. That Adventure comes in second is interesting. I wouldn't necessarily characterize a lot of what I've got as Adventure, though I suppose that term can be applied quite widely.
As with the genre list, no surprises for the top place for writers. I suppose that Chris Claremont is the third-highest representation has something to do with the aforementioned 1987 collection. It would be interesting to find a year, and read only comics from that year for a year.
One last one for today. For publishers, the top two aren't much of a surprise. Actually, none of the top ones really are, simply for the fact that they can handle the kind of volume that produces far more representation than the smaller publishers.
Okay, that's it for now, but that's a fun little toy. I'll see if I can generate some other interesting visualizations another time.
Not all of my comics have all of the same data entered in the database. Some stories don't have titles, for instance. Or the writer and artist may not have been recorded in the comic. But most have Cover Years. It makes sense that 2001 and 2002 are the most represented, as that's when I had my store. But 1987 comes in after that, my X-Men, Avengers, Animal Man, didn't have to pay for my own food days.
Ha. Animal Man is the only character who makes enough appearances through the database to merit mention. What this actually says is that I was far more caring about keeping track of my Animal Man appearances than any other character in the collection. This'll be an interesting graph to run once all of the comics are properly indexed.
No surprise which genre wins out in my collection. That Adventure comes in second is interesting. I wouldn't necessarily characterize a lot of what I've got as Adventure, though I suppose that term can be applied quite widely.
As with the genre list, no surprises for the top place for writers. I suppose that Chris Claremont is the third-highest representation has something to do with the aforementioned 1987 collection. It would be interesting to find a year, and read only comics from that year for a year.
One last one for today. For publishers, the top two aren't much of a surprise. Actually, none of the top ones really are, simply for the fact that they can handle the kind of volume that produces far more representation than the smaller publishers.
Okay, that's it for now, but that's a fun little toy. I'll see if I can generate some other interesting visualizations another time.
Sep 15, 2015
Some new presences on the Web
I've decided to put the word out to SOCIAL MEDIA!!!
Yes, a Twitter account wasn't enough. (@giantcomicbox)
The Giant Box of Comics now has a Facebook page and a Tumblr. There's going to be a lot of repeat, but I'll also post original content in those places appropriate to the forum.
Follow me. Soon I shall convert you all!
Yes, a Twitter account wasn't enough. (@giantcomicbox)
The Giant Box of Comics now has a Facebook page and a Tumblr. There's going to be a lot of repeat, but I'll also post original content in those places appropriate to the forum.
Follow me. Soon I shall convert you all!
Aug 12, 2015
On the Run: Mark Waid's The Flash - Relevant Data
Part 1 - Pasts, Presents, and Futures
Flash & Green Lantern: The Brave and the Bold #1-6
Flash Annual #4
Flash v.2 #62-66
Part 2 - Finding His Footing
Flash Annual #5
Flash v.2 #67-68
Green Lantern (1990 series) #30
Flash v.2 #69
Green Lantern (1990 series) #31
Flash v.2 #70-73
Part 3 - Ghost Story
Flash v.2 #74-76
Green Lantern (1990 series) #40
Flash v.2 #77
Flash Annual #6
Flash v.2 #78-79
Part 4 - Pasts and Futures
Flash v.2 #80-94
Part 5
Flash v.2 #0
Flash v.2 #95-105
Part 6
Flash Annual #8
Flash v.2 #106
Underworld Unleashed collected edition
Flash v.2 #107-109
Impulse #10
Flash v.2 #110
Impulse #11
Flash v.2 #111
Part 7
Flash v.2 #112
Flash Annual #9 (maybe - not actually a Waid-penned piece)
Flash v.2 #113-117
Justice League: A Midsummer's Nightmare collected edition
Flash v.2 #118-121
Part 8
Flash v.2 #122
Flash + Nightwing #1
Flash v.2 #123-129
Flash Annual #10
Speed Force #1
Flash Secret Files and Origins #1
New Year's Evil: The Rogues #1
Part 9 (a bit of a detour - we'll look here at the year Waid and Augustyn took off from Wally's adventures, chronicled ably by Grant Morrison and Mark Millar and friends, and at Waid's treatment of the Flash in JLA.)
Flash v.2 #130-134
Green Lantern (1990 series) #96
Green Arrow (1988 series) #130
Flash v.2 #135-138
JLA #18-21
Flash v.2 #139-141
Flash Annual #11
Part 10
Flash v.2 #142-143
JLA #32-33
Flash v.2 #144
The Kingdom: Kid Flash #1
Flash v.2 #145-150
Flash 80-Page Giant #2
Flash v.2 #151
Part 11
Flash v.2 #152-154
Flash Secret Files and Origins #2
Flash v.2 #155-160
Part 12
All-Flash #1
Flash v.2 #231-233
DC Infinite Halloween Special #1
Flash v.2 234-236
Having laid that all out, it looks pretty daunting. But I'm looking forward to reading everything here. A caveat: I think this is just about complete, but if I'm missing anything that I discover over the course of this read, I'll slot it in where appropriate.
Jun 10, 2015
The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 106: The Adventurers #0, 1986
From fantasy comic to fantasy comic. Of the 12000+ comics in the collection, 749 are tagged with the fantasy genre, making it the 5th most numerous genre in the collection. Which, really, for a medium overwhelmed by the superhero, is pretty good.
There's the is weird danger with zero issues. This one was published after the first 4 issues of The Adventurers. It's fairly obvious that the issue is geared toward people who have read issues 1 - 4, rather than as an introductory story to bring people into the world of Anoria. I'd hazard a guess that what is revealed in this issue in some ways spoils the intrigue that probably unfolds (we'll see soon, I guess) in the previously published issues, yet there's no real warning inside that one ought to read this issue after the ones that numerically follow it. If I had the first four issues, it would be interesting to read them knowing what I now know, and contrasting it to how the series had originally unfolded. Sadly, that won't happen. It would be nice if I could finish off all of the series that I'm partially reading, but as my wife pointed out to me last night, collecting is not the purview of the poor. This project is less about completing series and more about reading comics.
The Adventurers, at least as represented in this issue, has something going for it, but in contrast to the AD&D comics I've been reading the last couple of weeks, it suffers for the comparison. I delved, a few years back, into the strange world of amateur Star Trek web series, fascinated by the idea that some people loved the show so much that they would plunge their time and money into continuing the series. What I came away from this experience with was the knowledge that there's a reason we have professional actors. I wonder if the same can be said of professional comics writers? The Adventurers is written by someone who obviously loves the genre, and loves the medium, but the dialogue, the plot, it's slightly amateurish. While this lends it a certain naive charm, it also highlights the technical acumen that a comics writer must master. Writing a comic is not like writing a screenplay or a novel. In this case, it's more collaborative, and there's an aspect of visuality that is occasionally difficult to write. I've attempted it myself, and the visual language is by far the hardest part to write with words. The nice part is that writer Scott Behnke acknowledges this in the prefatory material in the comic, noting that his writing "has improved significantly" since starting the project 2 years earlier. He also notes that "the best way to learn is by doing," and to note that one can always improve, can always learn, is the sign of an agile mind. I look forward to seeing this improvement in subsequent issues.
Problematically, there's very little action in this comic, it being mostly about the assembly of the party of heroes from the previous four issues. There is one double-splash page battle, a flashback, that's pretty cool, but everything else is talking heads, basically. Again, this points to the idea that this comic is intended not to stand as an introduction to the series, but as an expansion of the knowledge a regular reader already has. It might have been better to label it issue #4 1/2, but the zero issue seems to be a regular trope of the medium, and who are we to argue with tropes.
I'll stick with The Adventurers for a few more days, but it'll jump around a bit as I don't think I have that many consecutive issues of the series.
Apr 17, 2015
The 40 Years of Comics Project: Weird Metadata Post #2
A breakdown of the top 10 artists and writers in my collection, by number of entries.
Name - # entries - approximate % of collection
Artists:
John Byrne - 179 - 0.019%
Jack Kirby - 157 - 0.013%
John Romita, Jr. - 131 - 0.011%
Mark Bagley - 118 - 0.010%
John Buscema - 103 - 0.009%
George Perez - 102 - 0.009%
Brent Anderson - 101 - 0.009%
Dave Gibbons - 100 - 0.008%
Tom Grummett - 94 - 0.008%
Sal Buscema - 92 - 0.008%
Writers:
Grant Morrison - 581 - 0.049%
Chris Claremont - 307 - 0.026%
Mark Waid - 305 - 0.026%
Brian Bendis - 287 - 0.024%
Alan Moore - 255 - 0.022%
Warren Ellis - 249 - 0.021%
Jonathan Hickman - 241 - 0.020%
Kurt Busiek - 231 - 0.020%
Steve Gerber - 205 - 0.017%
Geoff Johns - 201 - 0.017%
A couple of things jump out at me. First the number of comics by individual writers far outstrips the comics by individual artists. This is most likely a function of my following writers, rather than artists, but it also might say something about the relative ease of scripting a comic versus drawing a comic.
The list of writers is unsurprising to me, except for Claremont, whose writing I don't particularly care for, but who is apparently a fairly large presence in the collection. The artist list is full of surprises. I really don't care much for Byrne either, but he's my top artist? Attests to his productivity, if nothing else, I guess. The Kirby and Bagley stuff is less surprising, as is the Grummet stuff. Both Bagley and Grummet worked on Thunderbolts, which I collected voraciously.
In contrast, there's a rather remarkable amount of writers and artists in the collection who are represented by a single work.
Name - # entries - approximate % of collection
Artists:
John Byrne - 179 - 0.019%
Jack Kirby - 157 - 0.013%
John Romita, Jr. - 131 - 0.011%
Mark Bagley - 118 - 0.010%
John Buscema - 103 - 0.009%
George Perez - 102 - 0.009%
Brent Anderson - 101 - 0.009%
Dave Gibbons - 100 - 0.008%
Tom Grummett - 94 - 0.008%
Sal Buscema - 92 - 0.008%
Writers:
Grant Morrison - 581 - 0.049%
Chris Claremont - 307 - 0.026%
Mark Waid - 305 - 0.026%
Brian Bendis - 287 - 0.024%
Alan Moore - 255 - 0.022%
Warren Ellis - 249 - 0.021%
Jonathan Hickman - 241 - 0.020%
Kurt Busiek - 231 - 0.020%
Steve Gerber - 205 - 0.017%
Geoff Johns - 201 - 0.017%
A couple of things jump out at me. First the number of comics by individual writers far outstrips the comics by individual artists. This is most likely a function of my following writers, rather than artists, but it also might say something about the relative ease of scripting a comic versus drawing a comic.
The list of writers is unsurprising to me, except for Claremont, whose writing I don't particularly care for, but who is apparently a fairly large presence in the collection. The artist list is full of surprises. I really don't care much for Byrne either, but he's my top artist? Attests to his productivity, if nothing else, I guess. The Kirby and Bagley stuff is less surprising, as is the Grummet stuff. Both Bagley and Grummet worked on Thunderbolts, which I collected voraciously.
In contrast, there's a rather remarkable amount of writers and artists in the collection who are represented by a single work.
Apr 3, 2015
The 40 Years of Comics Project: Weird Metadata Post #1
New feature. Not even remotely sure why, or what good it does, but I think about this collection this way sometimes. I'm going to try to do this approximately twice a month, but that might not last. Or it might be significantly more. But there's a lot of different ways to interact with this kind of collection. This is one of them.
When I type "Steve Gerber" into the filter on my database, I am returned with 206 comics.
At approximately 15 minutes a comic, that means I will be spending about 51.5 hours reading Gerber's work. (I should note that this doesn't include any of his stuff in collected editions. I'm having thoughts about how to handle collections that I also own runs of. Different post.)
This also means that I'll be spending 206 days reading Gerber's work, or 56% of a year.
In contrast to the collection, as it stands today at 11832 comics, the Gerber sub-collection constitues about 0.02% of the collection.
The Steve Gerber Collection is housed in 2 short comic boxes. Also housed with the Gerber Collection is the ancillary collection of Man-Thing. Gerber rose to prominence while writing Man-Thing in Adventure into Fear, so I class further Man-Thing series and appearances as a sub-division of the Gerber Collection.
The Man-Thing Sub-Collection constitutes another 21 titles not written by Gerber.
What might be interesting at some point is to take a character like Man-Thing and read everything in my collection that features the character in chronological order. There are 40 Man-Thing comics, spanning the years 1974 to 2012, and I know for a fact that I don't have everything he's been featured in.
(For number junkies, that's 11% of a year reading Man-Thing comics, and they make up 0.003% of the general collection.)
The earliest Man-Thing comic to enter the collection, by virtue of its ID number is The Man-Thing v.1 #1, January 1974. The earliest Steve Gerber is Howard the Duck v.1 #1, January 1976.
When I type "Steve Gerber" into the filter on my database, I am returned with 206 comics.
At approximately 15 minutes a comic, that means I will be spending about 51.5 hours reading Gerber's work. (I should note that this doesn't include any of his stuff in collected editions. I'm having thoughts about how to handle collections that I also own runs of. Different post.)
This also means that I'll be spending 206 days reading Gerber's work, or 56% of a year.
In contrast to the collection, as it stands today at 11832 comics, the Gerber sub-collection constitues about 0.02% of the collection.
The Steve Gerber Collection is housed in 2 short comic boxes. Also housed with the Gerber Collection is the ancillary collection of Man-Thing. Gerber rose to prominence while writing Man-Thing in Adventure into Fear, so I class further Man-Thing series and appearances as a sub-division of the Gerber Collection.
The Man-Thing Sub-Collection constitutes another 21 titles not written by Gerber.
What might be interesting at some point is to take a character like Man-Thing and read everything in my collection that features the character in chronological order. There are 40 Man-Thing comics, spanning the years 1974 to 2012, and I know for a fact that I don't have everything he's been featured in.
(For number junkies, that's 11% of a year reading Man-Thing comics, and they make up 0.003% of the general collection.)
The earliest Man-Thing comic to enter the collection, by virtue of its ID number is The Man-Thing v.1 #1, January 1974. The earliest Steve Gerber is Howard the Duck v.1 #1, January 1976.
Mar 16, 2015
The 40 Years of Comics Project - A Note on Organization
I had mentioned in the introductory ramble that I would at some point explain, albeit briefly, the way in which this collection that I'm reading is organized.
The following are the ways in which the collection is broken down in my database: Alan Moore Collection, Animal Man Collection, Basement, Frank Quitely Collection, Grant Morrison Collection, Jonathan Hickman Collection, Magazine Boxes, Sage's Room, Steve Gerber Collection, Storage Collection, Supreme Collection.
These all correspond to locations in which the respective pieces of the collection are housed. The Moore collection is actually obsolete now, as I've filed his works back into the greater collection. The "Storage Collection" category replaced the "Garage" category I used to use when the majority of my collection was stored in our garage back in Ontario. The "Basement" delineation, which I think I'll have to change, refers to the pieces of the collection that I keep close at hand that don't fit into one of the more narrow criteria of the collection. This would include comics that I'm currently collecting that don't fit in to one of my writer/artist sections, or older comics that I'm enjoying and want to have close to hand. Works that will be playing a fundamental part in my research fall into this category, and it is called "Basement" as these were the comics that stayed inside the house, as opposed to the "Garage" collection.
I notice, having outlined this, that I don't have a "Doom Patrol Collection," "Avengers Collection," "Superman Collection," or "Batman Collection," even though these works are separated from the greater body of the archive. In my database, all comics having to do with the Doom Patrol are labeled as such, but more than likely are included in the "Basement" collection. As I go through the collection over the next few decades, I imagine the refinement of this system will be one of the larger ancillary projects I'll undertake.
Also of note, I use the Collectorz.com Comic Collector program, but I'll make an admission here: I use a bootlegged version that my Dad got me years ago. One thing I'm concerned over is that this version won't work when I finally (finally) get around to upgrading my operating system. Further, having used the program for so long, I feel like I really ought to pay for it. It's an amazingly useful program, and if you're looking for something to keep track of your comics with, I highly recommend this versatile application. But what happens if the new version I buy doesn't recognize my older file? Much as I enjoyed the process of cataloguing my collection, I'm not sure I have it in me to start again from the very beginning.
That's enough of that for now. I'm sure I'll find time to elaborate on the various bits of the collection as we encounter them.
The following are the ways in which the collection is broken down in my database: Alan Moore Collection, Animal Man Collection, Basement, Frank Quitely Collection, Grant Morrison Collection, Jonathan Hickman Collection, Magazine Boxes, Sage's Room, Steve Gerber Collection, Storage Collection, Supreme Collection.
These all correspond to locations in which the respective pieces of the collection are housed. The Moore collection is actually obsolete now, as I've filed his works back into the greater collection. The "Storage Collection" category replaced the "Garage" category I used to use when the majority of my collection was stored in our garage back in Ontario. The "Basement" delineation, which I think I'll have to change, refers to the pieces of the collection that I keep close at hand that don't fit into one of the more narrow criteria of the collection. This would include comics that I'm currently collecting that don't fit in to one of my writer/artist sections, or older comics that I'm enjoying and want to have close to hand. Works that will be playing a fundamental part in my research fall into this category, and it is called "Basement" as these were the comics that stayed inside the house, as opposed to the "Garage" collection.
I notice, having outlined this, that I don't have a "Doom Patrol Collection," "Avengers Collection," "Superman Collection," or "Batman Collection," even though these works are separated from the greater body of the archive. In my database, all comics having to do with the Doom Patrol are labeled as such, but more than likely are included in the "Basement" collection. As I go through the collection over the next few decades, I imagine the refinement of this system will be one of the larger ancillary projects I'll undertake.
Also of note, I use the Collectorz.com Comic Collector program, but I'll make an admission here: I use a bootlegged version that my Dad got me years ago. One thing I'm concerned over is that this version won't work when I finally (finally) get around to upgrading my operating system. Further, having used the program for so long, I feel like I really ought to pay for it. It's an amazingly useful program, and if you're looking for something to keep track of your comics with, I highly recommend this versatile application. But what happens if the new version I buy doesn't recognize my older file? Much as I enjoyed the process of cataloguing my collection, I'm not sure I have it in me to start again from the very beginning.
That's enough of that for now. I'm sure I'll find time to elaborate on the various bits of the collection as we encounter them.
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