ComicVine is the site that was never supposed to get made. Who would build such a large, complicated site for such a small audience? There's simply no money in it. No one reads comic books anymore anyway.
The two of us almost fell for it... almost.
Sometimes you just have to be a true believer and have faith.
Comic Vine was originally constructed during a 11-week marathon coding session in the Fall of 2006 by Ethan Lance (code) and Dave Snider (design/css). It's a site where professionalism was thrown out the window and and suits were replaced with color co-ordinated underwear. Dave and Ethan met and previously worked for CNET Networks where, along with some other fine engineers, they helped launch TV.com and MP3.com from scratch. In early 2006, both left to found Enemy Kite, LLC with the intention of focusing on user-centric, quality sites in passionate niches. Boompa.com, Enemy Kite's first site, focused on people's love of their cars and launched in May of 2006. The site also provided a stable code base to build Comic Vine on.
On the editorial end Tony Guerrero wrote the majority of Comic Vine's initial super hero and team descriptions. He's a full-time teacher in the bay area and also happens to be Ethan's brother-in-law. Along with Dave and Ethan, who are big comic book nerds themselves, Tony moderates all incoming content to the vine.
The Comic Vine Mission
Comic Vine is first and formost a user-submitted encyclopedia for comics. To that end we hope to become the most up-to-date and authoritative resource on the Internet for the medium. It's a lofty goal and one we don't take lightly. Comic Vine is completely custom built and uses a toolset made specifically for the catologing of comics and comics alone. We promise to always update and expand the toolset as long as there is a community that wants to submit data. We are always going to be as relevant as you want us to be.
Comic Vine is also a community of comic nerds. We're trying to provide new methods for fans to express their passion for comics. We'd like to help out the comic wanna-bes, whether that's the 12 year-old tracing his first X-Men cover or the 40 year old who's still a big kid and dresses up for the local Con. We just want this to be a fun place to chat up comics.
We Couldn't Have Done It Without...
Bob and Terry Snider - Who knew full well we were gonna build a comic site and helped us out anyway.
Alyx Lance - Ethan's wife who stayed cool through not only another long-hours launch, but had a baby along the way.
Bobby Gaza, Andy McCurdy and Stephen Blake - The other half of the original "zombie team". 18 months, 2 site launches and a mess of alcohol, good-times and cross-polination. We learned a lot from these duders.
The Open Source Community - Specifically anyone who has contributed to PHP, SMARTY, MySQL or the DOJO Toolkit.
ComicBookResources.com, Wikipedia.com, Comics.org and Marvel.com - Great sites in their own right who inspired us. We hope to fit in there somewhere.
Meat Loaf and Regina Spektor - These two artists made up likely 50% of the play time during the Comic Vine build.
Contact Us
Enemy Kite LLC
2532 Durant Ave Suite 102
Berkeley, CA. 94704
510-704-0811
