Friday, September 15, 2006

Original Art

I recently started commissioning and collecting comic art. I'm also planning on learning how to picture frame. Once I get some time I'll scan (or take pictures) some of the work for everyone to see.

ComicBooker.com

ComicBooker is a side project I've been planning on designing for quite some time. There are lots of sites that have information on comic books and even a few that give you the ability to track you collection. The problem is that none of them have both or have powerful interfaces for managing your collection. The link to the site above may or may not be live at the time of your reading this but we'll have the initial version up soon. Here is a posting on Comic Book Resources' forums describing the project and asking for volunteers to help with managing the data once its in place. Gathering the data hasn't been easy but surprisingly it hasn't been that bad. As the number of users increase the data will become more accurate (include variant information etc) over time. If you are interested in helping out there is an email address in the forum post mentioned above.

Getting my comics organized

I recently bought a couple cases of Comic Book Drawer Boxes so that I could organize all my comics once and for all. I pretty much pre-order every independent/small publisher horror comic that comes out every month. What I'm planning on doing is blogging a short review of every one of those comics. I got into EverQuest in march of this year and haven't read a comic since (MMOs are too addictive). All that is about to change and I'm determined to get caught up on everything.

Monday, August 21, 2006

Comicbase 11

I recently purchased Comicbase 11 Professional. I'd always heard it was the ultimate comic book collection software. All I have to say is if that is truly the case then comic book collection software is in a sad state. Over the past week I've found several bugs in the software that are written off by the author as 'by design.'

Here is a perfect example that left me speechless. There are browsing arrows at the top of the screen which bring you from one title in your collection to the next. When you reach the beginning or end of your collection you would think that it would stop on the first or last title of you collection or loop around to the beginning or end. That isn't the case at all. The first/last titles in the database ("0/6, o6Po (Netcomics, 2005)" and "ZZZ, ZZM (Alan Bunce, 2000)") are displayed as a place holder so the software knows when to stop. So in summary you get to browse through your collection plus one title at the beginning/end that have nothing to do with your collection. I'm not joking and I was told by the author that this is "by design." I couldn't respond to him, I was left speechless. You would think that at version 11 a piece of software would be a relatively refined piece of work.

Perhaps I'm being a bit critical as I have been writing database driven applications for over a decade myself. I'm putting this in my blog for the search engines. Hopefully the next technically savvy person researching CB11 will google this post and think twice before spending way more than this software is worth. Before closing I'd like to offer some positive remarks on the software. The data itself (not the application which presents it) is very useful and detailed. It is so good that it almost (that's a big almost folks) makes the software worth the price tag.

Monday, January 16, 2006

Good comics I've been reading

I read pretty much every horror comic that comes out every week. I know that's a bold statement but its true. Now if only they were all actually worthy of reading :). One new comic that peaked my interest is called Archaic. The cover art on the first issue kinda reminded me of some of the cover art I've seen on Glen Danzig's Verotik site. The actual story reminded me of a couple stories I read in an issue of the now canceled Metal Hurlant. If you are a horror comic fan such as myself I'd recommend that you check it out.

Another comic I've become addicted to is Girls being published through Image Comics. The entire premise of the comic is just nuts (not even going to bother explaining it, just read it!) but I really like the flow of the story and the writing reminds me a bit of some other great monthly comics like Y - The Last Man and The Walking Dead.