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What is Comic Vine's mission?
Put simply, to be the most useful and easy to use comic book website in the world. We've also built enough community tools to hopefully be a fun place to kill time while you wait for the latest comic drop.
Who runs this site, how can we contact you?
Comic Vine is owned and operated by Whiskey Media, who distill fine websites out of Sausalito, CA near San Francisco.
Send your mail and free comics to:
Comic Vine
1001 Bridgeway, #226
Sausalito, CA 94965
Direct your News and Community questions to:
Tony Guererro (aka G-Man)
tony@comicvine.com
Direct your Sales and Biz Dev questions to:
Mike Tatum (aka The Great Mamboozo)
mike@comicvine.com
Editorial and Production:
Ethan Lance (aka Red L.A.M.P.)
Sara Lima (aka BatgirlBabs)
Drew Scanlon (aka Funkify)
How do submisions on Comic Vine work?
Comic Vine uses a unique system for content submission that involves heavy moderation for new or anonymous users and gradually opens up more options to the individual user as they continue to submit quality data to the site. Most users can gain live edit access (where submission show up on the site immediately) within a week or two of submitting approved content. Until that time submissions go through a moderation queue that is monitored by the staff, or most likely, volunteer moderators from the community. We try to get to new submissions within 24 hours. You will receive a private message once your submission has been approved or rejected and a history of your submissions can be accessed at anytime from within your profile.
How do I create new pages on Comic Vine?
Pages on Comic Vine are split into the following searchable page types. All new pages go through a moderation check and are either approved or denied within 24 hours. Once approved, you'll recieve an email and can edit your pages in more detail.
Add a Character
The heroes, villains and people that inhabit comic books. They must exist in at least one comic book.
Add a Team
Teams are groupings of multiple characters that fight or work together. Teams can not be a part of other teams.
Add a Writer, Artist or Editor (aka. Creators)
A creator is a living human being that designs, writes or edits comic books.
Add a Story Arc
Story arcs are major comic events comprised of at least 2 issues.
Add a Volume
Volumes are a collection of numbered issues that make up a comic book.
Add a Publisher
Publishers are the companies or brands that comic volumes are released under.
Add a Comic Object or Thing
Objects or things are pages that concern something inanimate that exists in a comic universe. One example of an object is adamantium.
Create a Concept
Concepts are ideas or beliefs that exist in a comic universe. "Mutant" or "Gamma Rays" are good examples of concepts that might benefit from their own pages.
Create a Location
Locations are the places, both fictional and real, that exist within comics. Daredevil resides over Hell's Kitchen and Superman lives in Metropolis.
How does Comic Vine deal with character naming and aliases.
Comic Vine centers around the costumed crusader or team first and the separate universes, volumes and personae they inhabit second. In this way there is no character named Ultimate Spider-Man on CV. There's just plain old Spider-Man, who is attached to issues in volumes called "Amazing Spider-Man" and "Ultimate Spider-Man". Of course we realize these two characters operate in different universes and there are some differences. Those differences should be covered in the description text on the single Spider-Man page. Doing so keeps all Spider-Man info in one place and makes the site much easier to use.
The exception to this is that some alternate reality characters that are both big and different enough can have their own page, for example Powergirl has a separate page from Supergirl. Other examples are Superman Prime, Bloodstorm and Maestro.
The same rule goes for characters who have had multiple personae such as The Flash, Bat-Girl or Robin. There should only be one Flash on Comic Vine, not three. We handle the separation of the character by allowing for alias pages such as Wally West and Barry Allen (two of The Flash's personae) attached to The Flash where specific info can be stored. You're also encouraged to explain and discuss the differences between these personae on the main Flash page.
The exception to this is when a character have used the same name, but have nothing else in common - for example Spider-Man 2099.
For characters who have come to the world of comics from television or movies, it's not unusual for more than one publisher to be attached to the same character i.e. Number Six from the new Battlestar Galactica or various characters from Xena: Warrior Princess. In this case, we serve the character first and the publishers second. As such, regardless of the publisher, there should be only one character page per character. Any differences between the incarnations or adventures of a hero/heroine from different publishers should be noted in the text of the character page.
Character naming conventions
The golden rule: Each superhero character, despite the number of alter-egos, gets one and only one page.
Do not separate characters/teams based on Universes!
There's only one Spider-Man and only one Flash. There is no Ultimate Spider-Man.
Do not separate characters based on Publishers!
There's only one character that's been translated from television or movies to comic books. There's only one Xena, one Buffy, one Lisa Simpson.
Do not separate characters based on personae.
There's only one The Flash in the database despite there being multiple people that wore the mask.
There's only one real name per character. It should be currently published persona, not the original!
Tim Drake is the real name of Robin, not Dick Grayson.
All other personae should be considered an alias.
Dick Grayson was Robin, and should be listed an alias of the character.
If you notice the above is not true somewhere, let us know and we'll get it fixed.
If you see a page with Black Canary and another with Dinah Lance with recent comics and or information on it edit us a comment and we'll merge the two.
How to combine, delete or re-name pages
Often you'll find pages, characters or teams that need to be combined, deleted or renamed on the site. Both are possible but can only be handled by someone with staff or moderator privileges. You can either contact us directly or leave a note on the Delete/Combine boards that describes the problem and we'll try to resolve the issue as soon as possible.
Image upload best practices
Only submit ACTUAL comic covers when doing submissions for new comic issues. NO PREVIEW IMAGES.
- If you can't find an image online, scan it yourself. If you can't find the image or don't have a scanner, don't submit it.
- When adding images for characters, teams, creators, etc. please check the galleries for the image you're going to upload to make sure it is not already in the gallery. Please don't submit full cover scans for anything other than the actual issue. Either crop the image to focus on the character, team, etc. or find another image. Full comic page scans are not allowed anywhere.
- If a character has multiple galleries with specific categories or themes, please upload your image in the appropriate gallery. For example, submit pictures of zombie Spider-Man in the zombie Spider-Man gallery, not the regular Spider-Man gallery.
- Also think about what pictures you upload. Don't google for images of Gambit and upload all 10.000 results here, upload quality pictures.
- Avoid adding images tagged or watermarked with other sites' URLs.
- No nudity/hentai in the galleries. No photoshopped repaints of nude or nearly nude models as your favorite characters. No dollz/minis/micro-heroes in the galleries.
- When removing images or entire galleries please provide a note to the moderator explaining why you're removing it, is it a duplicate image, is it too small, does it not display correctly, etc.
Article writing tips
Do not plagiarize content from other sites like Wikipedia. Comic Vine is a unique resource.
Overview - Main Article
- The "deck" should contain 1-3 sentences that start with "Pagename is...". It should be historical and not topical.
- The original creator(s) should be mentioned early in the article.
- The main article should be written chronologically, with newer events at the bottom of the document. Imagine you're telling a story with a beginning, middle and end.
- Non comic cannon events should be at the very bottom (example: toys, movies).
- Story arcs should be summarized or listed on character/team pages, and linked off to more complete coverage on the actual story arc pages. Try not to duplicate information.
- All that said, long pages are fine. We're a community of comic book nerds! Embrace the info overload.
Page to page relationships (friends, enemies, teams)
- All relationships cross reference. Adding Superman to JLA adds JLA to Superman as well.
- Write the description about the relationship, not the individual!
- Do not copy text from overviews. Write original content about the relationship.
- Only add significant relationships. If there is no story to tell, there is no need for the relationship to be listed.
Story arcs
- Story arcs should only be created for major events, not for every mult-part comic.
- Story arc descriptions should cover the impact and historical context of the series.
- Plot elements should be covered in the individual issues associated to the story arc, not the description.
Creators
- In the "deck" mention the nationality, most worked with publisher and most important work(s) of the creator.
- Descriptions should be written chronologically in respect to the creator's life, not the characters in their work.
- Default images for creators should always be of the creator themself, not their artwork.
- Only create "Key Creator" relationships for artists/writers that signicantly evolved the character/team.
Issue credits, what is appropriate?
Only credit characters that have speaking parts within the comic!
- Do not credit characters that are only mentioned by other characters.
- Credit objects and concepts that play a significant role in the issue. Don't credit Mjolnir just because Thor is in the issue.
What powers Comic Vine?
Comic Vine is powered by an in-house, structured wiki platform designed specifically for and by Whiskey Media.
The "Whiskey Powered" platform benefits from the following open source technologies:
- Django - A python based web framework.
- Postgres - Database.
- Solr - A java powered search engine based off Lucene.
- MooTools - A javacript framework.
- YUI editor - The Yahoo UI wysiwyg editor.
Is there a Comic Vine API available?
It's in the works. We plan to provide free access to a large portion of our database for non-commercial projects.
