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:

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:

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.

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

Danny Earls (b. 1989)

1989 April 22
Retired professional footballer who is now a comic artist.

Chondra Echert (b. 1983)

1983 April 22
Chondra Echert wrote Key of Z, Kill Audio, The Amory Wars, and Translucid with Claudio Sanchez and served as creative co-director of Evil Ink Comics.

Mike Farrell (b. 1966)

1966 April 22
Mike Farrell graduated from Norwich University, Class of 1988. Military service, two years as a Vulcan Platoon, one year as a Battalion S-3, and one year as a Battery XO.

Farrell was the artist for Eagles Dare (AAGER Comics, 1994 series).

Marie Javins (b. 1966)

1966 April 22
Editor Marvel Comics, 1990-1991.
Colorist, 1989-1995.
Editor of the promotional comic, Further Adventures of Savin' Dave and the Compounders for Merrill Lynch, 1997.

Elaine Lee (b. ????)

????? April 22
Elaine Lee is an American actress, playwright, producer, and writer, who specializes in graphic novels. She has also received recognition and awards for her work as a creator and producer of audio books and dramas.

Her comics have been illustrated by artists including Michael Wm. Kaluta, Charles Vess, James Sherman, Steve Leialoha, Linda Medley and John Ridgeway.

Her graphic novel Starstruck: The Luckless, the Abandoned and Forsaked was nominated for a Jack Kirby Award as The Best Graphic Album of 1985.

She is the mother of Brennan Lee Mulligan, author of Strong Female Protagonist.

Jørgen Moe (b. 1813)

1813 April 22 - 1882 March 27
Sammen med Peter Christen Asbjørnsen den ene parten i forfatterparet Asbjørnsen og Moe, som er mest kjent for sin innsamling og nedtegning av norske folkeeventyr.

John Russell (b. 1885)

1885 April 22 - 1956 March 6
Science fiction and genre author active 1916-1929. Later became a Hollywood screenwriter.

David A. Trampier (b. 1954)

1954 April 22 - 2014 March 24
Artist for early Dungeons & Dragons books and modules.
Creator of the comic strip Wormy that ran in Dragon Magazine's Dragonmirth section from September 1977 to April 1988.

Jorge Velasco Félix (b. 1935)

1935 April 22 - 2014 July 19
He served in various and important positions in the publishing industry: from 1965 to 1970 he was CEO of Editores Asociados Mexicanos and Editorial Meridiano; from 1970 to 1982 he was managing director of Grupo Sayrols, and from 1983 to 2001 he was general director of Publicaciones Citem and Grupo Editorial Vid.

Allan Asherman (b. 1947)

1947 April 21 - 2023 September day?
Received a B.A. in Journalism.

Influenced by Superman and Science Fiction.

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)
Disclaimer
The Grand Comics Database Project (GCD) is a volunteer project with the goal of documenting and indexing all comics for the free use of scholars, historians, researchers, and fans.
The GCD acknowledges that the all-encompassing research nature of the project may result in the posting of cover scans for comics with images that some may find objectionable.
Viewer discretion is advised.
The Grand Comics Database Team
Useful Links
my.comics.org
Last Updated Issues
Statistics
16,330 publishers
73,835 creators
202,060 series
2,045,450 issues
191,310 variant issues
449,343 issue indexes
1,212,027 covers
3,904,780 stories