>massive western hobby>$16B industry>the only functional cataloging site has all its functions locked behind a subscription Why isn't there a good free site like the ones weebs have? Are comic book fans just not into web dev?VerseDB is janky and I can't find anything else.
>>151318536Manga industry loses 50 million a year because of free reading sites
>>151318536THIS. it'd be so easy to discover obscure comics if there was like a MAL for comics and you could sort by publisher/year
>>1513185501-I wasn't talking about free reading tho. I'm talking about a cataloging site/social platform to track what you're reading and discover new stuff. Like lettterboxd or MAL or Anilist. None of these encourage piracy or have any negative effective on the market.2- there have been free comic reading sites as long as I remember. At least since the late 00s. 3- 50 mil is almost nothing in a now +$12B industry that had no idea how to monetize in the west before people did free labor to translate their shit
Can you explain to a layperson what the difference is vs something like readcomiconline? More complete, more indie stuff? I'll take my answer off the air thanks
>>151318662of course. A cataloging site is basically a database of different titles and all the different information associated with them, genre, publisher, artists, characters, etc. They're great in keeping track what you've already read, what you want to read, and what you're currently following. Basically many of the functions of leagueofcomicgeeks.com but not paywalled. Even those seem lacking to be honest compared to the other media interest websites.Examples of this for other media are:backlogged for video gamesletterboxdGoodreads or storygraph for bookslast.fm for musicmyanimelist or anilist for manga and animereadcomicsonline hosts the content. these sites have gained some cataloging functionalities over the years, but that's not their main goal. also, due to their illegal nature, they could get taken offline without notice taking your list with you.
>>151318536>>151318638>A Patron subscription includes early access to features that we are beta testing. Some of these features may be tested for weeks or months, but will ultimately be made available to Pro subscribers. Others may become part of the free baseline experience in the future. Basically all the stuff that SHOULD be free isn't because all that information hasn't been filled outThe site is community driven and while improvements have been coming out in a rapid pace, the cracks show hard when you look past the current direct market releases and find comics that aren't on the site, release dates that haven't been pinned down perfectly, comics whose genres/themes haven't been properly added, etcGranted I'm not entirely sure even if that promise will be held but that's the reason t. A Rank 4 contributor on the site
>>151318536Most people actually reading comics are either tech illiterate boomers collecting floppies or theater kid types drawing shitty indie zines.
>>151319987Also ESLsHalf of comic twitter are ESLs for some reason and they read through piracy
>>151318536Cause comicbookdb got bought out and fucking died
>>151320028Kek not surprised
>>151318536I needed a cataloging site for comics. Thanks.
>>151319952I'm a contributor on a non-/co/ cataloguing site, and it's kept afloat by a gang of jobless autists who have sat and filled out information for over 15 years. Having a rank system is great bait for contributors, so that's smart, but all you can do is give it time. Does it have a quality assurance system, so people can point out incorrect information? It's a shame western comics haven't been given the mangaupdates treatment until recently.
>>151322415>mangaupdatesWe had comicbookdbIt was great, fantastic even but then some jackass bought it only to kill it
>>151322441Fuck, I'm sorry to hear that. I'll never understand why people spend so much money to crush something good. It's senseless. Did he have no respect for comics, or did he just mismanage the site to death?
>>151322415Anyone can contribute to LOCG but if you're below a certain contributor rank you have to wait for approval by someone with a higher rank or an outright moderator there and it varies from being done in an hour to taking over a week for a response.There are rules but some higher ranked users don't bother doing things correctly because there's nobody really stopping them (for example, character profiles are supposed to not say stuff like "X is the protagonist of *insert series*) There is an accuracy system where you can have your rank be lowered but I'm not sure how enforced it is, I've been docked some points in the past for it but I know how to quickly regain them.There is a Discord where a lot of the more active contributors and moderators apparently communicate and they seem to try and coordinate major changes like how they're steadily segregating all the Hasbro universe stuff properly or what they did with Conan just recently but I'm not a part of it.Personally I'd rather just concentrate on doing stuff nobody else is doing and sometimes I see certain additions or changes I'm not sure of but I honestly don't want to waste my time entering some sort of editing drama or do something that I didn't know got a pass (light novels used to prohibited but the site's creator recently permitted them, I think Vault publishing them directly to LCS' might've been a cause) so I prefer to just leave it up to said Discord if they notice.>>151322494It just diedNo seriously, no warning or anything it just straight up died and the site's creator had no idea what happened
Oh yeah, by the wayDid you know that PreviewsWorld.com gutted a significant chunk of their information for comics from a myriad of publishers like Fantagraphics, IDW, Devil's Due, SLG, etc?Release dates, solicit descriptions, etc are all just gone.Probably even lost forever since not everything was properly stored on other sitesAnd yet despite all that somehow /co/ was the only to notice almost immediatelyArchiving information for comics is kind of a headache.
>>151318536This is one of the main reasons the left cant really get Anime, the early adopters were all engineers, mostly in IT, developers, etc. And the left only works in humanities/social studies.
>>1513186521. Don't care2. Didn't ask3. You type like a fag
>>151322610Extremely interesting, thank you anon. Clearly these issues are universal. Our site has the same problem with inconsistent rules and rule enforcement due to disagreement or lack of communication between staff, at least partially because the official guidelines are so outdated. Good on you for avoiding edit wars and Discord bullshit. Some of the most important work is in the background, especially for small series that don't get much attention. I looked at the LOCG site and I'm surprised how much manga they have. The software for comic stores is a brilliant idea. >It just diedOuch.
>>151322818>I'm surprised how much manga they haveIt's a tremendous work in progress held up by a few dedicated users the same way Rebellion/2000 AD saw an increase of contribution activity shortly after individual stories per issue were added as a feature.By all means bless them, that's a lot of work that I can't imagine myself doing There's one Rank 4 user who's inserting individual chapters and I'm not sure if they're supposed to do that because the only instances from what I can tell is for digital releases from Viz and otherwise they'd prefer you to have the chapters be in the original anthology releases and THEN have them be connected to the English tankÅbon releases since manga chapters don't get released individually outside of what Viz does.But like I said, not my jurisdiction If you don't mind, what site do you contribute to?
>>151322977There are so many resources for manga, I wasn't sure if it was necessary for a site intended for western comics, but it makes more sense if they're focusing on the English Viz releases. Good luck to that soldier. Hopefully they're doing it right; it sucks to lose a bunch of work by misinterpreting the rules.I contribute to My Figure Collection, a Japanese figure and merchandise site. It supports manga too, but only Japanese releases, as well as doujinshi. I don't want to get too off-topic since it's not /co/, but there's never a dull moment on there. It's been around 17 years or so, and the owner is checked out beyond pushing UI changes everyone hates, so every necessary change takes months and months of waiting for a response. I love the site, though. Cataloguing is very satisfying.
>>151323261>I wasn't sure if it was necessary for a site intended for western comics,Yeah that was kind of my thought process tooI questioned why weebs would even use LOCG when they have older and more filled out alternatives (though the individual story format for reprints is good and I haven't seen anything like it on other sites aside from comics.org which isn't focused on solely manga) but if the way the site is designed works for the few who do actively use LOCG for it, good for them.>focusing on the English Viz releasesThere's also how Viz themselves release manga previews in the form of FCBD single issues.I sort of like to think that's part of the reason why Captain Underpants has a pass there since Scholastic did release an FCBD issue containing an excerpt of one of the books>My Figure CollectionInteresting, likewise I totally get what you mean when you say it's satisfying
I love scrolling past a million entries from panini comics.I love that there are different pages for the same character.I love that character appearances include cameo appearances and story excerpts with no way to filter
>>151323384Comic re-releases can get complicated, fast, so I can see why supporting individual stories, FCBD prints, and other one-off situations would make it appealing for manga collectors, too. I'm glad that LOCG is supporting all of the release types it can. You never know when you'll get your hands on an old or unusual run of your favorite comic and want to catalogue it. I wish you the best of luck with your work on the site. It's nice to talk to someone who gets the appeal. It's a large part of the enjoyment I get out of my hobby.
>>151323580>Comic re-releases can get complicated, fast, so I can see why supporting individual stories, FCBD prints, and other one-off situationsApologies if I wasn't clear but when I mean individual stories I mean, you know Spider-Man debuted in Amazing Fantasy #15? About a year or two ago, the way it worked was that collected releases would list every issue it got collected from (leftovers from this design can still be seen if you look long enough) which isn't really accurate because those other stories in Amazing Fantasy #15 weren't reprinted in a Spider-Man trade and filling out the trade's credits to accommodate it down to characters would be tedious.So the solution was to do something like what comics.org did and separate the stories in said issue and when filling info for collected editions and other reprints the contributor could go for that isolated, individual story and even take into account if the story was altered, translated, etcThis naturally would apply to manga since the vast majority from what I can tell is published originally in an anthology>I wish you the best of luck with your work on the site>It's nice to talk to someone who gets the appeal. Same to you man
>>151318859Thanks for the thorough response anon
>>151323906No, you were perfectly clear, I just misinterpreted since I'm not familiar with comics. The new system makes a lot of sense. I like the granularity of it, so you can dig through to find variations like a colored version of a previously B&W printing, an uncensored version, etc.
>>151318550Damn that sucks
>>1513255101. I'm willing to be a significant amount of that comes from manga that aren't officially translated, released overseas, etc where piracy does indeed become the only option to read said manga to begin with given circumstances2. You're on /co/3. Pic related
>>151318536I tried googling VerseDB, and man, unless you add quotations it never shows up. Their SEO makes Kiwi Farms blush.
>>151325596*to bet
What kind of name is VerseDB anyway? Is it cataloging poems?
>>151322610Fuck's sake.
>>151327018Comics are poetry.
>>151325510Nah man, officially we receive a fraction of what they actually produce in Japan. Even many of their classics have yet to get an official translation cause we're stuck with so few publishers Viz, Dark Horse, and one other I forget its name. I'd give anything for Rokudenashi Blues official release but never ever.
>>151318536we still have Comicvine's database
>>151318536Grand Comics Database (which feels like a site from the 1990s)https://comicbookroundup.com/
>>151327018could be verse as in universe.
>>151318536>massive western hobby>$16B industryi need proof.
>>151322780>don't care>replies twice with incoherent nonsense and projects being a fag
>>151319952oh that makes a lot of sense, thank you
>>151319987wild characterization. to be fair i haven't actually ran into a pure comic book fan my age
>>151322415this is what we really need
>>151322762Interesting. although I'd agree based off /a/ alone, I've only met lefty or lib animanga fans irl and I'd say 8/10 of em were in tech/STEM. this is specifically the east coast though, I don't know how it is elsewhere.
>>151323384>>151322977What kind of skills do you guys contribute? I'm starting to learn some very basic webdev (not sure how relevant that'll even be in a few years), but it'd be cool if i can motivate myself by having a goal and being able to contribute to sites i like
>>151329637Nice. I wasn't aware of this. Thanks
>>151329654hell yeah thank you
>>151330224you got me the source is garbagehttps://www.strategicmarketresearch.com/market-report/comic-books-marketThese soruces indicates that the US market is a couple bils, so I find it unlikely that the global market is somehow 16https://finance.yahoo.com/news/north-america-comic-book-market-150100290.html?guccounter=1https://www.comichron.com/yearlycomicssales.html
>>151322780
>>151329142Holy kek
>>151329312You never know man. I didnt think City Hunter would get published in English but here we are.
its dead jim
>>151333137It's actually the fastest growing site for comic infoMarvel and DC literally their solicits directly to it and creators do weekly AMAs
