Editing Information on Issues & Comic Rack Interaction

EDIT: Added some information thanks to pikahyper and also information from this thread

I’ve started editing information for a lot of comics that I have access to recently and I’ve noticed some things that I have questions about. I’ve seen some style guides and the videos on Comic Vine about style, but I haven’t seen any that talk about all the details of editing the information in an issue so I’m attempting to write a style guide and ask questions as well. A lot of this is probably self explanatory, but I was hoping to find some consensus on entering some kinds of information. The bolded parts staring with ?s below are questions or suggestions that I have for Comic Vine. I was hoping to get some feedback before I submit something to the “Ways and Ideas to improve Comicvine” Thread

I’m also writing this because I use the software ComicRack to catalog my collection and the Comic Vine Scraper plugin to automatically populate the metadata by pulling information from Comic Vine. By using this software, I can easily find issues that are missing information and add it to Comic Vine. So far, there is a lot of information that is styled differently and it would be nice to have a guide for style conformation

Issue Information

Issue Number

• Number of the issue
• If the issue is a one-shot, or a trade paperback with a unique volume and title, then it should be marked as #1 instead of being left blank
• The indica for the book usually has the most accurate information

Issue Title

• The title of the issue
• This is usually found on the inside of the of the book near where the credits are, or the title page
• Sometimes it can be found on the front cover
• Books with multiple titles should have titles separated by semicolons
• [Major Arc](, Part #): Title(, Part #)
  -- e.g. --
  The Hit List, Part 1: The Domino Effect
  The Secrets of the Blood Dynasty, Part 1
• If an issue does not have a title at all, Untitled is an acceptable tile.
• I've always been a fan of putting words like “of”, “in”, “the” (in the middle of a title), etc in lowercase, but this is up to editor preference
• For miniseries with a subtitle, it is acceptable to add the sub-title as the title of the issue. (e.g. The title of issue 1 of Avengers: Prime could be Prime, Issue 1). This is up to the editor's discretion
• For trade paperbacks the name of the story arc of the trade paperback could be used as a title, but just by itself and not with a volume number. (e.g. The first Ultimate Spider-Man's trade paperback would be titled "Power and Responsibility" and not "Volume 1, Power and Responsibility")

Release Date

• This is the the release date on the indica of the book. The indica is usually located on the bottom or side of the credits/title page near the beginning or end of the book
• For some companies like Marvel and DC, this date will not reflect the actual release date
• For the majority of American comics, there is no day specified on the indica and one should not be entered

Plot Summary

• User written summary of what happens in the book
• If the summary is a copied solicitation from an official website, the entirety of the copied text should be in italics and void of extra formatting like bullets, bolds, etc
• Do not add a link to a solicitation. Copy the text over and italicize it
• Do not add links to items that can be added to the Creators, Story Arcs, etc, sections

Covers

• Covers should be of the highest quality/size attainable and should look the same as the cover on an issue picked up from a store
• Preview images, Cover art (not the actual cover itself), and any other kind of watermarked Cover are not valid.
• The default cover for an issue should the regular non-variant cover, or "Cover A" for comics that come with multiple covers. Newer covers that don't display which cover they are usually tell you with a code right over the barcode. (eg. 02913 means issue 29, Cover 1, 3rd Printing. You'll want to find one that has "XXX11")
• Unless you have 5000 Wiki Points, setting the default cover requires a request, which can be handled here
• Wraparound covers are valid, however, if a wraparound is also the regular cover, it is best to crop the cover to normal size and set that as the default image and also upload the full wraparound under it
• Digital covers are valid. However digital covers should never be the default cover for an issue unless they look exactly the same as the cover to a physical issue

Creators

? For some of these fields, if the creator’s studio is listed with the creator, the creator and not the studio should be listed right? I think most people enter it like this, but I wanted to be sure

Writer

• Writer(s) of the comic. Sometimes listed as Story or Plot
• Sometimes listed together with the penciler/artist as “Storytellers: [Writer] and [Aritst]”
• This creator should be the person(s) that actually wrote the book itself, and not just a part of the plot creation

Editor

• Editor of the comic. There can be multiple editors
• Includes Editor, Associate Editor, Editorial Assistant, Assistant Editor, Editor in Chief, etc.

Artist

• Artist of the issue. Sometimes referred to as Illustrator
• On ComicRack, an artist is listed as Penciler and Inker

? If the person listed as the artist only did pencils (there are no inks), wouldn’t it be more accurate to list the creator as just a Penciler?

Penciler

• Penciler(s) of the comic. Sometimes referred to as Breakdowns or Layouts

Letterer

• Letterer(s) of the comic.

Inker

• Inker(s) of the comic. Sometimes referred to as Finishes or Finished Work

Cover

• A creator that worked on the cover, from Penciler to Colorist
• Creators that worked on a cover should not have Artist, Penciler, Inker, or Colorist marked in addition unless they also worked on the interior art

Other

• Creators that are not defined by any of the other category
• e.g. Character Creators. Designers, Logo, Chief Creative Officer, Publisher, etc.

Journalist

• Not exactly sure what this is. I think I saw someone put a publisher in here once

Production

• Producer(s) of the comic, Producer, Production, Executive Producer, etc.

Colorist

• Colorist(s) of the Comic

? Sometimes there is a singular artist for an issue that does the Pencils, Inks, and Color or Pencils and Color, or all Color work, but in ComicRack, Artists are listed as Penciler and Inker. If the Creator does Pencils, Inks, and Colors, could we mark those Creators as Artist and Colorist or Penciler, Inker, and Colorist?

Characters, Teams, Locations, Concepts, Objects

• These are mostly self explanatory with the only note being that each entry here should have some kind of significant role in the issue’s story

Story Arc

• Major Story Arc that the comic is tied to such as Brightest Day or House of M
• On ComicRack, this appears as Alternate Series and is really useful for searching for all issues related big crossovers series like House of M for example
• Story arcs should not be added to Trade Paperbacks, Hardcovers, or Foreign Comics. Each Trade Paperback, Collected Edition, Hardcover, etc should be added and linked to on the appropriated Story Arc's page instead. This is to help keep the reading order clean

Hopefully this guide will help newer editors, and hopefully I can get some feedback on some of the points that I brought up. I'm still learning about all the information that the Comic Vine Scraper such as Alternate Numbering and can update this post when I do figure them out. Thanks for reading!

@HalfShellHero:

Issue Numbers - For one shots it seems to be the standard to add it as #1 but a lot of editors will just leave it blank which is annoying. If a TPB's volume title is unique and its own volume it is added as a #1 even if it is like vol. 5, normally editors just add Vol. 5 to the issue's title to denote this, if the issue number was 5 instead of 1 a wiki editor that didn't know better would assume that #1-4 are missing and would add them creating dupes so it is just easier to mark it as #1 to minimize duplicate confusion.

Title - Your example is the proper modern layout ([Major Arc](, Part #): Title(, Part #)) but there are still a lot of wiki pages that need updating. Lowercasing of, in & the has always been the editors personal preference. For mini-series without titles most editors do add the part but again it is personal preference to which format they use. As for trade arc's being used as the issue title most people do that but only by itself, you won't see like "Vol. 3; Story Arc". Your never going to be able to standardize this though as there is just too much of it that depends on personal preference.

Plot Summary - don't use spoiler blocks, it was decided upon a while ago not to use them as someone visiting the page is likely to have already read the issue and nothing can be spoiled, plus it looks ugly as hell.

Creator - got any examples of creator + studio? I've never seen any unless the creator is a studio like Nate Piekos (Blambot) in which case you couldn't add them both.

Writer - A writer is a writer, if they didn't write the issue they should be put as "Other"

Editor - If the information is available add it, can never have too much.

Cover - I think that is what most people do but when issues are added from solicits they don't always label a creator as just a cover artist or interior artist so they get marked as both sometimes.

Other - It is a bit vague but we only have those few options available to us and some people just don't fit so it has to be used.

Production - Producer is a producer, don't think it matters what level.

You might want to go through this thread as well.

and another thing about issue titles, text found on the cover really shouldn't be used as the issues story title even if the issue does not have a title, it is fairly redundant since the issue has a picture and the user can see what it says. I've read a lot of comics and indexed even more from many countries and I've seen very few series that ever use the story title for the cover text, off the top of my head all the ones I can think of are from the UK and a lot of them are anthologies so only adding the cover text is a disservice since it is only one of many stories in the issue.

If an issue has no title at all a bunch of editors decided a while back that Untitled is acceptable to use since no comics ever have that as a story title, some people wrap it in quotes, () or <> but by itself is best.

@pikahyper: Thanks for all the information! I think I got a better understanding of making edits. I also updated my original post to add in all that information so that there's less searching around

An example of finding the title of an issue on the cover would be:

As for the studio and the creator together, it would be something like:

@HalfShellHero: Couple things about your updates, first don't add #1 to all trades, some are actually a series of trades that would be part of a single volume, the adding of #1 is really only for single trades that get their own stand-alone volume and indicia does trump this so if the indicia does give an actual number that can also be used instead of #1.

Second digital covers aren't exactly frowned upon, accepting them is just a necessary evil because they are now so prevalent and for the majority of publishers the digital editions are not different then the print editions, I think the only ones that differ are DC, Marvel & Image (and all their various studios and off-shoots). DC & Marvel both remove the barcodes and add website and copyright information, Image drops the price off the cover.

Like I said some series have used the story title on the cover but it isn't a lot, my main problem with it is that it can be extremely confusing because not many comics actually do it and with so many users just automatically adding the text on the cover as the story title a user that doesn't have the comic won't know for sure if it is accurate, I'm sure everyone wants to this site to be accurate but there isn't a whole lot of automatic trust on the internet.

Ah Comicraft then ya I think your assumption would be right to just add Albert and not him and Comicraft, ideally though I would hope people would put info about his connection with Comicraft on his wiki page and looking at it I see nobody has, his website is the comicraft site but that isn't enough really so maybe you should add both, you should get some other opinions on this one cause it really might be more accurate adding both if the creator pages are not clear.

@pikahyper: Yikes, thanks for the clarifications.

Yea, the title on the cover thing is a little confusing. I've seen some issues that had stuff that was written on the front as the title when on the inside, the title was completely different. In the example I posted, the title is confirmed on the credits page, but I forgot to upload that as well :/

I think from now on, I'll try and add information on the Creator's page about them working for a particular studio. Hopefully I can get some more feedback on this.

@HalfShellHero: You might want to rename your Title header to Issue Title or Story Title so it isn't confused with the volume title/name which is a whole other ball of wax that primarily relies on the indicia.

Question concerning cover creators: when an issue has separate inkers and letterers (or any other artist) for the cover alone, should these by marked as "inker, cover" and "letterer, cover" or just "cover?"

Question concerning cover creators: when an issue has separate inkers and letterers (or any other artist) for the cover alone, should these by marked as "inker, cover" and "letterer, cover" or just "cover?"

@halfshellhero: For Trades, doesn't this make it more difficult to organize on Comicrack?

Example: X-O Manowar TPB 1-7 are scraped as X-O Manowar: By the Sword #1 V2012. The Series is "X-O Manowar: By the Sword". Title: Volume 1, Volume: 2012, Issue: 1. When I am on Comicrack, it doesn't stack my trades with my other single issues. It stacks them by series, publisher, or storyline. Can Comicvine change the databases to "[Series] Vol. [#]: [Trade Title]? it seems so much better

@vash_stampede: Sorry but we won't change our data to cater to third party applications, the API is offered as is so it is up to the developers of the applications to use that data in a way its users want.