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
Gerard van Straaten (b. 1924)
1924 April 17 - 2011 April 6Besides doing comic books, he was an illustrator for (children's) books. His most memorable work is on the De Kameleon line of books.
Riitta Uusitalo (b. 1960)
1960 April 17Uusitalo is an illustrator, painter, visual artist, and cartoonist. She has contributed to the Finnish comic anthology Kuti.
佐野菜見 (b. 1987)
1987 April 17 - 2023 August 5Nami Sano (佐野菜見) was a manga artist whose career started at twenty years old. Desiring to be a mangaka since a child, she started drawing manga in high school and studied political cartooning at university. Best known for the series Sakamoto desu ga? (坂本ですが?) and Migi to Dali (ミギとダリ). She passed after a month long battle with cancer.
四葉真 (b. ????)
????? April 17Makoto Yotsuba (四葉真) is a manga artist and illustrator who did the adaptation of Record of Grancrest War (グランクレスト戦記). The pen name Mikuni Mizuki (みくに瑞貴) is used for creating hentai.
Charles Baskerville Jr. (b. 1896)
1896 April 16 - 1994 November 20Baskerville was an illustrator, painter and muralist, known for his portraits. He served in World War I as a lieutenant in the Rainbow Division and earned a Silver Star for gallantry. He served again in World War II as a lieutenant colonel in the US Army Air Force; he was the Air Force's official portrait painter and was awarded the Legion of Merit by General Henry H. Arnold.
Charlie Chaplin (b. 1889)
1889 April 16 - 1977 December 25An actor and composer who was one of the founders of United Artists, Charlie Chaplin was one of the great stars of the silent film era. He is best known for his character the Little Tramp.
Adelso Corona (b. ????)
????? April 16Inker
Martin deMuth (b. 1895)
1895 April 16 - 1961 March 2Sketch artist, world traveler, and lecture who later in life worked for Will Eisner.
Hermes Tadeu (b. 1978)
1978 April 16 - 2003 December 21Artista mais conhecido como colorista, que alcançou fama ao colorir as capas de Mike Deodato Jr. no Hulk. Ele morreu tragicamente aos 25 anos, num assalto na cidade litorânea de Praia Grande, onde tinha ido passar o fim de semana com a família.
Artist best known as colorist, who achieved fame by coloring the covers of Mike Deodato Jr. in the Hulk. He died tragically at age 25, in a robbery in the seaside town of Praia Grande, where he had gone to spend the weekend with his family.
Georgia Webber (b. ????)
????? April 16Comic creator best known for Dumb, an autobiographical comic about not being able to use her voice.
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)
- Edge of Spider-Verse #2 (Marvel)
- Miss America #70 (Marvel)
- Miss America #69 (Marvel)
- Miss America #66 (Marvel)
- Miss America #68 (Marvel)
73,617 creators
201,927 series
2,044,917 issues
190,989 variant issues
449,047 issue indexes
1,211,234 covers
3,901,162 stories