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

Patrick Gleason (b. ????)

????? April 19
Patrick Gleason is a former comic book store employee turned writer, artist, and New York Times Best Seller.

With 20 years of experience in the comic industry, he is known for his work on Superman, Supersons, Robin Son of Batman, Amazing Spiderman, Batman and Robin, Green Lantern Corps, Aquaman, and Justice League of America.

Cait May (b. ????)

????? April 19
Illustrator and co-creator of the webcomic Irregular, a version of which was later published by HarperCollins in 2021 under the title Another Kind.

Anita M. Mühl (b. 1886)

1886 April 19 - 1952 December 14
American psychiatrist. Author of Automatic Writing (1930) and The ABC of Criminology (1941).

Connie Naar (b. 1893)

1893 April 19 - 1964 September 5
Connie Naar was an American writer, artist, and editor of Portugese and West Indian descent. She began contributing to newspapers and magazines in the New Jersey and New York markets in the early 1910s, both art and writing articles.

In 1935 she became assistant editor of the fifth and sixth issues of Major Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson's New Fun (DC, 1935 series), as well as contributing to the first issue of his New Comics as writer and artist for Petey the Pup and writer for the text feature, The Book Shelf. She also contributed to the first issue of Wheeler-Nelson's More Fun (#7, continuing from New Fun).

She continued work as an illustrator though the '30s and '40s, gradually moving from periodicals to book illustration in the 1950s and '60s. She died of cancer in 1964.

Additional biographical information found in:
Women and the Comics (Eclipse Books, 1985) by Trina Robbins and Catherine Yronwode;
Field Guide to Wild American Pulp Artists "Connie Naar (1893-1964)" (https://www.pulpartists.com/Naar.html).

日野日出志 (b. 1946)

1946 April 19
Hideshi Hino (日野日出志) is a widely acclaimed horror manga artist and professor at Osaka University of Arts. Born in wartime China to Japanese parents but raised in Japan. Representative works in his extensive bibliography include Lullabies from Hell (地獄の子守唄 / Jigoku No Komoriuta), Gakuen Hyaku Monogatari (学園百物語) and Panorama of Hell (地獄変 / Jigokuhen).

藤沢文翁 (b. 1976)

1976 April 19
Bun-O Fujisawa (藤沢文翁) is a writer, director, producer, screenwriter, translator, radio personality and game scenario author. Creator of Mars Red, the stage reading play which has been adapted into manga.

Frank Bellew (b. 1828)

1828 April 18 - 1888 June 29
Born as the son of a British officer in India in 1828, he spent his youth in England and moved to New York City in 1850, where he started a career as an illustrator and comic artist.

Binglin Hu (b. ????)

????? April 18
Cartoonist/illustrator/designer whose debut graphic novel is Expedition Backyard (Penguin Random House, 2022).

Art Huhta (b. 1902)

1902 April 18 - 1990 October 14
Additional biographical information found:
The Stripper's Guide, Ink-Slinger Profiles by Alex Jay: Art Huhta, Tuesday, June 21, 2016, http://strippersguide.blogspot.com/2016/06/ink-slinger-profiles-by-alex-jay-art.html

Jay Kennedy (b. 1956)

1956 April 18 - 2007 March 15
Mike Baron stated that Jay drowned in Costa Rica.

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
16,321 publishers
73,708 creators
201,982 series
2,045,173 issues
191,161 variant issues
449,139 issue indexes
1,211,536 covers
3,902,143 stories