Presents! We Have Presents!

We've always thought that the perfect Christmas gift for people who love comics was...well, ComicBase of course! But we've just gotten our hands on something that makes ComicBase a better gift than ever!

Just buy or upgrade to ComicBase 6 Deluxe Edition and we'll throw in a copy of Comic Book Superstars (while supplies last). This 256-page hardcover is a one-of-a-kind reference, profiling comic greats ranging from Dan Abnett to Ray Zone. Compiled by industry legends Don and Maggie Thompson, the book even includes space for autographs, making it a perfect convention book. You can pick this volume up at the local book store for $16.95, or get it free when you buy or upgrade to ComicBase 6 Deluxe Edition. Already got your ComicBase 6? Registered users of ComicBase 6 Deluxe Edition can get a copy of this terrific book for the cost of shipping alone (limit one to a customer, please!).

The award-winning ComicBase Deluxe Edition also includes Bonus Disk #2. This jam-packed CD adds thousands of additional full-color comic covers to ComicBase, including virtually complete runs of Action Comics and Detective Comics, as well as almost every issue Image and Dark Horse have ever produced. It also includes exclusive video interviews with Frank Miller, Julius Schwartz, David Lapham, Colleen Doran, Jeff Smith, Sheldon Moldoff, and more!

ComicBase 6 Deluxe Edition sells for just $149. Upgrades from previous versions are $49.95. ($64.95 if you're upgrading from ComicBase 4 or earlier). Order by December 18th to make sure you get your copy in time for Christmas.

More Kudos for ComicBase

They Like Us! They Really Like Us!

Adding to the long list of positive reviews, ComicBase 6 just scored a 4-mouse rating from the notoriously hard-to-please Macworld Magazine. Then, only weeks later, ComicBase racked up another four-star review from the other side of the Atlantic from Macworld UK (They even sent us a nifty certificate which is proudly hanging in our offices).

We'd also like to express our appreciation for PC Gamer, who gave ComicBase a very nice write-up in their current issue.

Thanks, folks!

Update Watch

ComicBase 6.0.2 is the current 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! (And check our our holiday special while you're at it). 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 various 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 Corrections

We've just posted a new batch of content updates for November, fixing various typos and expanding the entries on hundreds of issues. This update is cumulative--it includes all the corrections previously released since ComicBase 6.0. Just use ComicBase's "Check for Program Updates" command to see this--and all other--available updates for ComicBase. Special thanks go out to all the ComicBase users who submitted corrections used in this update.

Pricing News

ComicBase's Peter Bickford writes the 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.

This month's online pricing report recaps recent trends including the record-setting sale of Detective Comics #27, the mania for flag covers in the wake of September 11th, and reprints (unedited) the controversial essay on comic slabbing in the resale market. Don't miss it!

Technical Tips

Insurance Reports

As a nationally recognized price guide, ComicBase is perfect for helping you insure your collection and substantiate its value for any special rider policies. Check with your insurance agent for the particular proof they'd like you to provide of your collection's value. For many companies, a printout from the ComicBase Statistics report is preferred, since it concisely states your collection's guide value, market price, and cost.

Other insurance companies prefer a more detailed run-down on your collection: either a title report, or even a full price list. For really large collections, however (and some of our customers have in excess of 100,000 comics), this can amount to a pretty impressive stack of paper. To avoid bankrupting yourself on inkjet cartridges, consider submitting your collection inventory on disk as a text file. By using the File Menu's Export Price List command, you can even tailor the information you provide to exactly match your agent's criteria. Since you only need to export data on the issues you own, there's a pretty good chance that the whole thing will fit on a single floppy disk.

Handling Multiple Collections

Depending your needs, there are a couple of ways to handle multiple collections in ComicBase.

The Simple Way: Separate ComicBases

If you just want to be able to track different family members' collections separately, the easiest way to go is to simply install ComicBase twice, in different folders on your hard drive. To make things easiest to manage, it's also a good idea to create shortcuts ("aliases" for Mac folks) to each ComicBase, calling one, for instance "My Comics" and the other one "Dave's Comics". Each copy will work independently, and all you need to do to work with a given collection is click the appropriate shortcut. You can even work with both at once.

The Flexible Way: Special Collections with Custom Fields

On the other hand, some people may want to keep an overall inventory of their comics in a single ComicBase, but also be able to separate out certain comics as belonging to special collections (e.g., "Expensive comics", "Comics for resale", etc.). In this case, it's a good idea to keep a single ComicBase, but use the custom fields to separate comics which belong in the special collections.

Let's say you wanted to keep separate track of your expensive comics. Use the Setup menu's Custom Fields command to define Issue Check 1 as "Expensive". Then, you can check off your expensive comics either individually, or by using the Quick Change command. (Bonus tip: in this case, you can do a Find Comics for comics priced over a certain amount, highlight the resulting comics, then use Quick Change to check off the "Expensive" field for all of the comics at once).

Once comics are marked as "Expensive" you can get a list of them quickly using the Find Comics command. For a total value of all those comics, print or preview the list of found comics. By using multiple custom fields or check boxes, you can even mark a single issue as being part of multiple special collections (e.g. "Expensive" and "On Consignment").

Subscription Information

Whenever a new issue of ComicBase Confidential 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.

Coming Next Month...

An interview with Brian Michael Bendis, writer of the hit Ultimate Spider-Man and Powers, courtesy of our friends at Tripwire Magazine. See you in 30!