Comics: My hunt for a comic book database pt. 3

The next product I reviewed in my hunt for a comic book database was, apparently, the 400-pound gorilla of products. It has the most features, the most detailed info, and it can actually calculate the current value of your collection. This product was ComicBase 15.

At a glance, this program has it all:

Keeping track of your comic book collection. The new ComicBase comes with built-in listings on virtually every comic published in the English language since the late 1800s, cover more than 450,000 issues and more than 30,00 titles. 


With free, downloadable price and title updates each week for a year and current pricing based from real-time market data—we work hard to keep you current on the comics that matter to you!

• ComicBase will automatically price your comics according to their condition
• Grading Wizard will help you determine its grade if you’re not sure about the condition of a comic you own.
• Use our barcode support jump feature (available in all versions) to go straight to a comic using the EAN/UPC number printed on the cover
• Track the purchase cost of your collection and generate a wide variety of reports and labels—including the new Collection Inventory Report—based on the criteria that you choose, like publisher, issues in stock, publication year, and more!
• With the ability to interface with Atomic Avenue, ComicBase also allows you to create your own comic book store online.

Yes, at a glance this had what I was looking for. But then it came to the price...

You pay for what you get
ComicBase has four different price-levels that range from FREE to $400. Yup, you read that right. That's a lot of smack, Jack. Now, the tiered pricing is kind of cool. The Free edition supports up to 500 comics, and the paid versions support collections of unlimited size... but there are limitations on key features like searching by creators and the number of color cover scans included.

Here's a breakdown of the versions (for a full comparison sheet, check out this PDF at their Website):

• ComicBase Free (500 comic limit)
• ComicBase Express: $49.95 (unlimited comics, but only 5,000 covers)
• ComicBase Professional: $129.95 (200,000 covers custom fields)
• ComicBase Archive: $299 (20 GB of covers & content)
• ComicBase Archive Blu-Ray: $399 (46 GB on one dual-layer Blu-Ray disc)

I set up a free account and, for the most part, liked what I saw... it was clean and easy to use. In fact, I liked a lot of things about its sleek, modern interface.

But the reality was, I couldn't get past the price. The minimum level that would be of any use to me was the Pro Edition for about $130. And even then, I couldn't be sure it would have the covers I wanted (I have a lot of Archie, Gold Key, Gladstone and other "unusual" titles... at least unusual when compared to standard fanboy fare of Superman, Batman, Spider-man, Wonder Woman and the more mainstream titles.

So I passed on ComicBase. It might be most of what I'm looking for, but it was out of my price range because I was pretty sure I would, eventually, have to upgrade to the Archive edition to get what I was looking for. Since it was out of my reach, I didn't use it more than a single day before I uninstalled it. I didn't want to get attached to something I couldn't afford to keep.

No, it was time to move on to collectorz.com and see if they could deliver what I needed at a price I could afford.

Return Wed. for the conclusion of my Blackmark Review
Also, come on back to see what I discovered for this week's NETFLIX FRIDAY