Big Changes for ComicBase Confidential

We knew way back when we launched ComicBase back in 1993 that we wanted to put out a newsletter for all our customers: something to keep everyone up to date with what we were doing, share tips, and answer questions. Unfortunately, the expense of printing and mailing a newsletter to thousands of customers prevented us from doing so more than about once a year. While this worked fine for announcing the new editions of ComicBase, it wasn't really all we had hoped for.

Starting with this issue, we're going to try something new for ComicBase Confidential. Unlike previous editions, this issue is designed exclusively for distribution over the worldwide web. It's also more feature-packed than any previous issue, including new columns on Pricing News, more extensive Technical Tips, and even an exclusive interview with Alan Moore provided courtesy of Tripwire magazine. The web format also lets us include links to updates and useful information right in the articles themselves. And, since it saves the cost of pulping thousands of rare glossy trees (required to make glossy paper newsletters), we should be able to publish far more frequently than in the past.

Whenever a new issue is ready, we'll be sending out notices to everyone who's signed up for the ComicBase mailing list. To get signed up, or change your subscription see the ComicBase Mailing List Page of the ComicBase web site.

ComicBase.com

A New URL, a Happy Ending

As of October 15th, typing "www.comicbase.com" into your web browser will bring you to--you guessed it--the ComicBase web site.

It seems trivial, but it required years of behind-the-scenes effort and costly legal battles against a cybersquatter who thought stealing trademarked names was the quick path to internet riches. Then, when anti-cybersquatting legislation made it easier to dislodge bottom-feeders like this, he quickly sold off the domain "ComicBase.com" to an innocent evangelical operation who had no idea that the name was in contention.

The situation could have been the beginning of a new legal nightmare. Instead, as soon as the group found out that "ComicBase" was our company's trademark, they worked with speed to see the domain returned to us, despite previous plans to use it for a Bible study project.

Think how astonishing this was: they'd bought the name with the best of intentions, only to be told from a perfect stranger that the name they'd based their whole project around couldn't be used. Instead of asking for compensation (or worse, seeing it as the first guy had, as an opportunity for extortion), they simply asked how they could set things right.

In short, they had honor. It's a quality seen far too rarely in this world of ours, and something I suspect that would put a lot of lawyers out of work if only more of us could exhibit it more often. My hat's off to the Praise the Lord Baptist Church of Claremont, California.

Update Watch

ComicBase 6.0.4 is the very latest version of ComicBase. If you own ComicBase 6.0 or later, you can download the updates from the links below. If you own an earlier version...well, upgrade for heaven's sake! See the ComicBase web site to find out all you're missing. And remember: all ComicBase customers--all the way back to ComicBase 1.0!--can take advantage of special upgrade pricing deals to bring your ComicBase up to date.

ComicBase 6.0.4 for Windows adds full compatibility with Windows 2000, as well as addressing several small technical issues and adding a couple of new features. See the updater for a full list of changes.

The main feature of ComicBase 6.0.4 for Macintosh is that it works around an incompatibility with machines with 1 GB of RAM. Special thanks to Keith Stattenfield at Apple for assisting us on this.

Content Updates

Back in ComicBase 6.0.1, we added the ability for ComicBase to accept content updates in addition to the regular program updates. This means that we now have the ability to fix typos or inaccuracies in the ComicBase data itself as soon as the problems are spotted. If you're running ComicBase 6.0.1 or later, just use the Setup menu's "Check for Program Updates" command to see a list of any available updates. (As a bonus, we've also posted new movies and pictures which you can download).

Remember also in ComicBase 6.0.1, we've expanded the ability of the File Tools > Rebuild Lists command to let it automatically clean up redundant information from the issue notes.

We Need Your Help: As it currently stands, ComicBase is by far the largest published comic book database in existence, containing some 2,000,000 discrete pieces of data. As you can imagine, we'd appreciate all the help we can get to make sure it's as accurate as it can be. If you happen to spot any mistakes in the ComicBase data, please send a note with the correct information to support@comicbase.com. We'll get your fixes into the next content update so that everyone can benefit. The corrections will also be passed on to the folks at Comics Buyer's Guide for the next edition of their Price Guide and Checklist.

Missing Titles/Missing Pictures

If there's a newer series we haven't covered yet, there's a good chance that our hardworking indexers have already got it queued up for the next edition of ComicBase. For older titles, however, chances are that we've simply never come across a copy ourselves: the first step in our editorial process. A very effective way of prodding us along is to send us a scan from an issue of the series. This inflicts great guilt upon us, causing us to move that title straight to the head of the pack for research and pricing, so that it makes the next edition of ComicBase.

We're also hugely appreciative of all the people who've sent us cover scans for the titles that lack them. If a title in ComicBase displays just a logo, it means we don't have any pictures at all of it in our library. In cases like this we'd very much appreciate anyone who could send us cover scans. Individual pictures can be sent (with title/issue, please!) to support@comicbase.com. Feel free to contact Pete Bickford at (408) 266-6883 if you'd like to send in more pictures than can be easily transmitted by email.

Pricing News

As many readers know, ComicBase's Peter Bickford writes a weekly Resale Report for Comics Buyer's Guide, pointing out trends in the comics market, giving the head's up on what's hot, deflating industry hype balloons, and sharing a not insignificant amount of comics trivia. Beginning with this issue of ComicBase Confidential, we'll be presenting "best of" excerpts to help ComicBase customers keep up with what's new in the comics resale market.

You can read the latest report here, or see it under the Pricing News section of the ComicBase web site.

Technical Tips

Quickly Getting to Picture Folders

Sometimes, such as when you're scanning new pictures, it's helpful to be able to jump directly to the folder containing the pictures for a given title. You can do this right from within ComicBase 6.0.2 using some hidden keyboard shortcuts. To open up the pictures folder for a given publisher, option-click (Mac) or Alt-click (Windows) on the name of the publisher from the Titles view. You can also open up the folder holding the pictures for a specific title by option-clicking (Mac) or Alt-clicking (Windows) on the comic picture.

Mac users may also want to check out the excellent shareware program Default Folder, which smoothes out many of the bumps in the Mac's Open and Save dialogs. It has the especially useful feature of letting you automatically switch which folder is being opened or saved to by clicking on a window that's visible in the Finder. Here at Human Computing. We use this feature in the combination with the keyboard shortcuts above to let us speedily save new picture scans to the proper picture folder.

Putting your Pictures on a File Server

Another behind-the-scenes improvement in ComicBase 6.0.2 is that you can now have ComicBase use pictures and movies that are located on another disk, or even a file server. This is particularly useful when you want to let several computers share the same pictures without having to copy them them to each computer's hard drive.

To make this work, just make sure that the disk or file server you'd like to use has a folder called "ComicBase Data" located on its top level, with sub-folders for "Pictures" (and "Movies" if you want to share movies too). Then, just copy all the pictures to that drive, and make sure the disk is mounted when you first launch ComicBase. Windows users will want to define any file server used in this way as a network disk using the "Map Network Disk" command in Windows.

From the Help Lines:Problems Opening the Database after Restoring from a CD-R Backup.

Sometimes engineering decisions make a certain amount of technical sense, but in real life cause tons of trouble for regular users. So it was with the decision to have Windows mark all files being backed up to CD-R as "Read-only". This is technically true--since CD-R media requires special programs to write to it, making any files on them effectively read-only. Unfortunately, when you copy the programs back to your hard drive, they stay marked as read-only.

This design decision caused any amount of trouble for folks backing up their ComicBase databases to CD-R, giving them permissions errors when they tried to use the database after copying it back to their hard drives. The solution was to right-click on the ComicBase Database.mdb file, choose Properties, then uncheck the Read-only box.

ComicBase 6.0.2 now also handles this problem automatically by checking for a database marked read-only, and attempting to uncheck this itself.

From the Help Lines: "Invalid Property" Message when opening ComicBase

If Windows gets mixed up about which fonts are installed, it can, on rare occasions, give an "invalid property" message when ComicBase is starting up. The problem usually centers around the Arial font, which is required by ComicBase. Sometimes, Windows has this font present in its fonts folder, but has not updated its own list of fonts to allow it to properly use it. To fix this:

1. Quit all programs
2. Move all fonts starting with "Ari" out from your Fonts folder, to the top level of your C: drive
3. Open up your Fonts folder and choose "Install New Font" from the File menu. If you get a message that the fonts are still in use, try booting into Safe Mode by restarting and pressing your F8 key.
4. Select the Arial fonts you copied out earlier. This will copy the fonts into place and get Windows to update its records.
5. Restart normally.

Alan Moore: the Tripwire Interview

Tripwire is one of the smartest magazines currently covering popular culture and the comics industry. In addition to its industry commentary and no-holds-barred reviews, this British magazine has garnered exclusive interviews with some of the most influential--and sometimes reclusive--figures in comics. By special arrangement with Tripwire, we're happy to be able to present this interview with comics great Alan Moore.

Tripwire can be ordered from your local comics dealer, or directly from the publisher's web site. Check it out, and tell a friend about it--it's a very welcome addition to comics journalism, and one we look forward to reading each issue.