A History of Comics in The Making

Ever mistaken some superhero for another? How about villains? There are a lot of those too, so it???d be no surprise to mix them up on occasion. Or what if you picked up comics for the first time in ages and felt like freshening up on the things you???ve missed? Perhaps you???d simply like to share your knowledge of some characters with the rest of the comic-loving community. Whatever the reason, you???ll be glad to know there???s a place for you on the Web, one that features a wiki editing style for making your contributions as simple and effortless as possible. It???s called Comic Vine.

Visit Comic Vine???s home page and you???ll see an illustration with video tour, a big search bar beneath, and some featured and popular characters, teams, powers, volumes ??? even some selections from the forums and some blogs are clickable right from the front page. The presence of these windows is no doubt the best thing going for Comic Vine at the moment, as it invites curious eyes and serious comic geeks alike to roam any which way they wish. You can call it a search engine, but it is more an encyclopedia. Don???t assume it???s a bland, sparse Wikipedia clone, however. Things are much more visually appealing on the Comic Vine.

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Looks can indeed make or break a product, service or site. But more important is how and how well it operates, how much effort is required by users to make a site work, and how easy and quickly one finds what one is looking for. Comic Vine was clearly designed by people conscious of these characteristics crucial to retaining a larger and larger fanbase. It???s not very different from a club for a particular comic book if you think about it.

The theme of the site fits in extremely well with all that it presents to the reader/contributor, be it a character???s bio or a personal blog. Large type is everywhere, and along with the attractive icons and images, you have plenty of little visual touches tacked onto the very current software and technologies running the whole show. You won???t find drag-and-drop Ajax-ish amenities, but the inclusion of such spectacles, at least at the moment, would not maintain Comic Vine???s tastefulness. You will not find crowded, disorienting pages, here.

Forums can be messy places, but it???s nice to see that the virtue of cleanliness carried over to the site???s conversation complex. You will not find an astonishing number of posts and replies on topics here just yet, but that could be just the thing you want. No wading through tons and tons of pages pertaining to each individual OP (original post)! And nicely-spaced formatting between entries makes reading an actual pleasure. I???m sure you can sense hints of astonishment of the thorough work Comic Vine has brought to the table in this review, but you have to experience the dreadful wealth of generic, jumbled forums ??? even some of immense popularity ??? that really make you pray to the heavens for something original and entertaining, to truly appreciate the significance of the quality Comic Vine has availed to comic and graphic novel fans everywhere.

For a place in a relatively early stage of its existence, Comic Vine offers a great deal to the user, without loading any excess with little pertinence to what???s at hand. It???s a great place to wander through, and a growing reference for fans of Comico to Vertigo, Excalibur to the X-Men. There are a large number of websites out there that offer comic subscriptions and industry news and commentary, but Comic Vine seems to be asserting itself as the place to go for the history of comics as a whole, with a heavy focus on art, the stories, and the people behind it all. Chat with fellow fans; argue with fellow fans; enjoy the genre with fellow fans. It???s all here.