The Grand Comics Database (GCD) is a nonprofit, internet-based organization of international volunteers dedicated to building an open database covering all printed comics throughout the world. Give our search a try, take a look at the menu to the left to see how you can help us improve the site, or use my.comics.org to track and manage your comic collection.
30 Years of the Grand Comics Database !
30 years ago the original announcement from Tim Stroup's on the Grand Comics Database first appeared on the Usenet group rec.arts.comics.misc on 1994-03-31 15:55:15 PST.Founders included Jon Ingersoll, Bob Klein, and Tim Stroup.
Since then the GCD progressed and enhanced in database content and functionality, with ups and downs. In all that time, the database survived at least two major technology changes on the backend. All this was achieved by the contribution of work and time of several hundred of volunteers.Thanks and congrats to all of us.
Updates To The Site! (Early 2024)
We deployed a different handling of characters from DC and Marvel in recent weeks. We now can record the universe from which a character originates. In the editing workflow this replaces the different character versions.
Examples of characters with different universes are:
- Spider-Man or
- Batman
Additionally one now can add the DC or Marvel universe in which a story takes place. One then can also see in which universe a character appeared in, or which stories take place in a given universe.
Examples are:
- issues taking place in Marvel : Ultimate - Earth-1610 or
- characters originating from DC : Earth-Two (Pre-Crisis)
Note that most stories and characters are in the so-called mainstream universe. Since we do not want to track continuity, the mainstream universe is the at the time of publication standard universe for DC or Marvel, no matter the specific naming or continuity setup. In particular, no retroactive changes to the universe. We mainly want to be able to track stories and characters in DC or Marvel universes that are different from the standard universe. In other words, the mainstream universe is the default universe, unless a different universe is specified in the story or for the character.
We also added lists for characters, group and universes.
- covers with a recorded Spider-Man appearance
- creators who worked on Commissioner James Gordon or
- series in which Hulk appeared.
For publishers we added a list of creators that were published by it, e.g. for Norwegian publisher Hjemmet / Egmont.
That is in addition to all the other lists we added in the last year, where for navigation one often can further filter by country, language or publisher.For all of these lists of course even more of our data needs to be migrated from text entries to linked records, or even entered at all. So, if you ever wondered about helping with the content of the database ?
Volunteers Wanted For Adding New Comics
Each week, a small number of GCD volunteers add listings to our database for the new comics released that week in North America. These are just the basic listings, not full indexes. This makes it easier for other volunteers who upload covers and for indexers, as well as for people using my.comics.org.
Each volunteer covers one publisher or a small group of publishers ("D publishers except DC", for example). From public sources such as ComicsList and Diamond Previews online, they add the issues and make note of the prices and a few other details. We are looking for additional volunteers for this weekly task.
Follow this link for a description of the process and a list of which publishers are currently covered.GCD Comics Timeline
Ed Fedory (b. 1949)
1949 April 26 - 2018 November 5Fedory wrote horror and fantasy stories for Skywald (1971-1975), Warren (1972-1973), Seaboard (1975) and DC (1977).
He was a passionate relic hunter and amateur historian. He wrote over 60 articles about searching for relics with metal detectors for Western and Eastern Treasures in his monthly column 'The Relic Hunter' (http://archive.wetreasures.com/). He wrote 'Relic Hunter the Book' and 'The World of the Relic Hunter' (Whites Electronics).
He was a Science teacher for 32 years at Coxsackie Elementary School, before retiring and continuing to run his hobby farm.
Marty Greim (b. 1942)
1942 April 26 - 2017 April 15Marty Greim did support work in production for Marvel during 1973.
Michael Kupperman (b. 1966)
1966 April 26Michael Kupperman is an American cartoonist and illustrator. He created the comic strips Up All Night and Found in the Street, and has written scripts for DC Comics. His work often dwells in surrealism and absurdity "played as seriously as possible."
His work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, LA Weekly, The Wall Street Journal, Screw, Fortune, The Independent on Sunday, Libération, Nickelodeon Magazine, The Believer, and Heavy Metal, as well as in comics anthologies such as Hotwire, Snake Eyes, Zero Zero, Hyena, Hodags and Hodaddies, Blood Orange, Rosetta, 106U, and Legal Action Comics. He has also worked on many books and projects for McSweeney's.
Hjalmar Sandøy (b. 1948)
1948 April 26Utdannet reklametegner. Har bodd i København siden 1968 (fra Konk #3/1979).
ベニガシラ (b. ????)
????? April 26Benigashira (ベニガシラ) is a manga artist whose work has been published in Ichijinsha's Comic REX magazine. Writer/artist on the series Bishoujo Doujin Sakka to Wakagashira (美少女同人作家と若頭) and writer on Salaryman ga Isekai ni Ittara Shitennou ni Natta Hanashi (サラリーマンが異世界に行ったら四天王になった話 / Headhunted to Another World: From Salaryman to Big Four!).
ふじた (b. ????)
????? April 25Fujita (ふじた) is the creator of the manga series Wotaku ni Koi wa Muzukashii (ヲタクに恋は難しい). Her Megane (めがね) name is used for boy's love manga.
芦奈野ひとし (b. 1963)
1963 April 25Hitoshi Ashinano (芦奈野ひとし) is a manga artist whose debut was in 1994. Best known for the series
Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou (ヨコハマ買い出し紀行).
Cassie Bill (b. 1910)
1910 April 24 - 2001 November 7Cassie Bill [Kathryn Helen Brinkman Bill] assisted Bill Woggon from sometime during the 1950s to 1961. She worked primarily doing pencil and ink work on the Katy Keene feature with Archie. As a high school student, she was a pianist with the Zoehlner Quartet. After attending the Art Center School in Pasadena, she was a fashion illustrator for the designer Irene, first at Bullock’s Wilshire, and later at MGM. There she worked with movie greats of the day, Lucille Ball, Carole Lombard, Greer Garson and Marlene Dietrich. In 1934, Cassie married John D. Bill, and in 1949 they moved to Santa Barbara with their two daughters, Judy and Molly. She remained an active and accomplished pianist, for a time giving piano lessons. Her ongoing artistic endeavors included cartooning, book illustrations, watercolor painting and line drawings.
Stanley Kauffmann (b. 1916)
1916 April 24 - 2013 October 9Stanley Kauffmann was a renowned New York theatre and film critic. A 1935 graduate of New York University, he began writing novels —his first was published in 1941— and also spent a brief period in the prospering comicbook industry, first at the B.W. Sangor Shop (1942), then as an editor at Fawcett.
望公太 (b. 1989)
1989 April 24Kouta Nozomi (望公太) is a Japanese author. Representative work is the light novel series Inō-Batoru wa Nichijō-kei no Naka de (異能バトルは日常系のなかで).
How to Help
There are several ways in which you can help us to improve our site and its content.
- You can provide missing data, update existing data, or upload cover scans. Just register an account with us, and you can start contributing.
- Donate for our ongoing costs, e.g. the server infrastructure. We are a non-profit organization and any funds will be used for our goal of documenting and indexing all comics.
-
We need volunteer web designers and programmers! Please contact the
gcd-tech group
or visit our
technical documentation
if you can help with any of these roles:
- Web designer / front-end developer (HTML / CSS / JavaScript)
- Python / Django programming
- ElasticSearch search server
- Web Services API
- Database Performance (MySQL)
73,933 creators
202,149 series
2,045,770 issues
191,352 variant issues
449,428 issue indexes
1,212,421 covers
3,905,898 stories