| News and Information for People who Love Comics | Vol. 9 No. 3 |
In this Issue... Last Chance to Save Big on Archive Upgrades! |
Upgrade
to ComicBase 9 Archive edition for just $99.95 Before we get on with the other cool stuff in this month’s newsletter, we wanted to remind everyone that there are just a few weeks left to save big money on the software which users have been calling “amazing”, “hellaciously cool”, and (our favorite) “JUST FREAKING AWESOME!” Yes, until November 1st, you can upgrade to the new, top-of-the-line ComicBase 9 Archive Edition (Regularly $299) for just $99.95 from any previous version of ComicBase. |
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...and so many new features we had to come up with a rather spiffy new web page to list them all. ComicBase 9 is available in both a 2-CD Standard Edition version for $149, and a massive 2-DVD Archive Edition (complete with over 70,000 covers, 20,000+ in full-size, high-definition format) for $299. But remember: you can upgrade from any version of ComicBase to the ComicBase 9 Archive Edition for just $99.95 + shipping—a 66% savings until November 1st, 2004. To take advantage of this terrific deal, just give us a call at 408/266-6883, or order online. |
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Comics We Fight Over When the UPS Truck Comes
People sometimes ask us where we get all the data that goes into ComicBase. Well, some of the information comes from kind users such as yourselves who send us additions and corrections. Some of it comes from our friends at Comics Buyer’s Guide. But most of what goes into ComicBase shows up in the form of large boxes dropped off each Wednesday by the UPS man.
Once the call of “Comics!” goes out, anyone within earshot comes running, box knives at the ready, to be the first to grab their favorite comics. Here are a few of our current faves:
| Y: The Last Man | In one horrific moment, every male being on Earth—save one—was struck dead by a terrible curse. The sole male survivors were an amateur magician named Yorick, along with his pet monkey, who may have survived due to the power of an ancient ring which the cash-starved Yorick had acquired second-hand as an engagement ring for his unsuspecting girlfriend. Writer Brian K. Vaughan and artist Pia Guerra have created a sort of post-apocalyptic road movie filled with secret agents, man-hating Amazonian cultists, roving Shakespearian troupes, paramilitary groups, and even a spacecraft full of Russian cosmonauts. It’s fascinating stuff, and you never know what the next issue will bring.
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Wanted (Image) |
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| Super villains of this multi-verse, unite! What’s not to like when the world’s most powerful and demented super-villains (amongst them the world’s greatest genius and a seventh dimensional imp) gang up, wipe out all the super-heroes, set up an ultra-secret organization to control the world, and brain-wipe the rest of humanity to think super-heroes and villains only ever existed in comic books? I’m ready for my lobotomy, Mr. DeMille! | ||
| Hellblazer | John Constantine, the star of this long-running Vertigo series, is a magician with the sensibilities of a con man; the reckless bravery to interfere repeatedly in the affairs of both Heaven and Hell; and the unfortunate tendency to get his friends killed—usually in horrific ways. It goes without saying, then, that he’s probably the most interesting lead character in the DC Universe. Garth Ennis rose to U.S. fame on the strength of his run on this series, including one memorable story in which Constantine saves the soul of a (rather alcoholic) friend who’d sold his soul for the power to turn water into beer. When the man lay dying, and the demon came to collect, Constantine convinced the demon to share a few pints of beer before getting down to business. The demon was quite enjoying his second or third draught when the enchantment which had created the beer was broken, making it revert to its original form: water. But Constantine had arranged that the water that this particular beer came from was actually holy water. As the demon fairly exploded from within, Constantine’s friend’s soul slipped away from Hell’s grasp. |
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The Walking Dead |
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At the San Diego Comic-Con, Tony Moore drew a picture of ComicBase editor Shiaw-Ling Lai as a zombie, and Robert Kirkman wrote “Ughh” on it. To her thinking, that entitles her to all the Walking Dead comics that come through this office… Kirkman’s Walking Dead follows the precedent of re-defining the zombie genre that 28 Days Later set, and pits Tony Moore and Charlie Adlard’s wonderfully grotesque, mindless, fleshing-eating zombies against a desperate cast of human survivors. But rather than just giving us a zombie-bashing fest, Kirkman engrosses the reader in a psychological drama of the tension between a motley crew forced to live in close quarters while the walking dead slowly pick off their members, one by one—and drives home the very real threat of what will happen to these characters if their hopes of rescue never come to fruition. |
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| Jughead | ||
| Kelly, our resident 10-month-old Mistress of Destruction, got hold of a recent issue of Jughead and reduced it to shreds in about 20 seconds flat. Luckily, we’d finished scanning and indexing it moments earlier. | ||
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Entering Hundreds of Comics with a Single Keystroke
This is the big one--the hint that can save you more hours than probably any other .
You can enter one, ten, or even thousands of comics into your collection in one fell swoop by just highlighting their lines in the issue listing for any title, then pressing the "1" key on your keyboard. (You can actually press any number 0-9 and ComicBase will automatically set the quantity for every selected comic to the number that you chose.
As a bonus, here are some tips on selecting comics in ComicBase:
- Ctrl-A will select all comics in a list
- Holding down the Shift key while selecting will select a range of comics
- Holding down the Ctrl key while clicking on different lines will let you make a discontiguous selection of any number of comics.
- You can combine any of these techniques with dragging up or down to extend or change the selection.
Note that for the one-key-quantity-entry
trick to work, the list focus should be in the default (Marked) cell
in the list. (It'll be set up properly if you do your selecting by
clicking in the blank column at the far left of each line). If you've
clicked on a specific field, like "Cover Price", the typing will
go to that
field
instead
of setting
the quantity
in
stock.
If you’ve got ComicBase 9, adding new cover pictures is amazingly easy. Just drag your pictures (in JPEG format) onto the image thumbnail on the appropriate title in ComicBase. The file will automatically be copied into the appropriate subdirectory in your Pictures folder.
If you hold down the right-hand mouse button while dragging the picture file, you can choose to Move the picture file instead of copying it. We use this a lot when we’re scanning art for ComicBase: we just save each image to our Desktop, then right-drag the picture files onto the appropriate titles in ComicBase and choose Move. ComicBase files the pictures away for us automatically, creating any necessary sub-folders in the process, and we get to see the picture appear right away in ComicBase. Very cool indeed!
List All the Comics in a Given Box
One of the most popular uses for ComicBase’s Custom Fields is to designate one of them as “Box #”, and to use that field to track which box a given comic is stored in. You can set this up by using the Setup menu’s Custom Fields command, and typing in “Box #” for one of the custom issue fields.
As a bonus, you can get a list of all the comics stored in a given box by doing using the Comics menu’s Find command. Just search for “Box #” Is <the box in question>. You may wish to attach the printout of this list to each box to give you a quick list of its contents without needing to open it up.
Want Adventure? The ComicBase Beta and Development List
Are you the sort of thrill-seeking free spirit who can’t wait to find out what the future holds? Do you want to live life on the bleeding edge of technology? Have you brought plenty of Band-Aids? Well, my friend, then you’re the sort of person who’ll want to join up for the new ComicBase Beta and Development List.
This new mailing list keeps you updated on all the new development and beta versions of ComicBase which are available for public testing. Such versions tend to have names like "ComicBase 9.0.3b7 rev 2" and are circulated in between major releases as a way for us to test bug fixes and float new features. Once things have settled down sufficiently, we make the release official and post the announcement to the main ComicBase Announcements list. If you’re feeling daring, however (and particularly, if you can write a coherent bug report), we’d invite you to join the new ComicBase Beta and Development List.
To join, go to https://www.comicbase.com/ComicBase_Mailing_List.asp
Administrivia and Mailing List Info
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