Comic Books

Comic Books: Linking Story to Issues

2008-05-13T18:55:11.0007Z

Ah, sorry. Didn't realize printing was a compound value. Thanks.

Comic Books: Linking Story to Issues

2008-05-13T17:18:19.0007Z

The properties "contents" (on "comic book issue") and "appeared in" (on "comic book story") are for that purpose.

Comic Books: Linking Story to Issues

2008-05-13T12:06:43.0012Z

Could we add a property that links Comic Book Story to Comic Book Issue?

Comic Book Series: Include periodical

2007-12-12T16:11:15.0005Z

Since in almost all situations, a comic book series could also be considered a periodical, it should be added as an included type. This would allow us to remove many of the redundant properties from comic book series as well as having aditional information not currently available to comic book series. (such as publication frequency)

Comic Books: comic book artist?

2007-11-19T18:17:13.0007Z

"Comic book creator" exists as a profession already, which includes both artists and writers. You could use that, or create a new topic.

Comic Books: comic book artist?

2007-11-16T07:21:44.0007Z

I ask because I wanted to give a fictional person that as a profession in his fictional universe...but I couldn't find any such profession as general as a comic book artist.

Comic Books: comic book artist?

2007-11-13T17:18:43.0000Z

You mean "only does art" as opposed to someone who also writes? Sure -- there are lots of them. If you mean someone who exclusively does pencils, probably only on a per-project basis.

Comic Books: comic book artist?

2007-11-09T04:22:19.0012Z

is there such a thing these days as a comic book artist? (that is, someone who only does the art) inker and colorer are way too specific for what i have in mind.

Comic Book Character: A couple suggestions

2007-09-23T22:53:56.0007Z

I'd be eager to see these all shaped up. How many instances do we have of these redundant properties?

Comic Book Story: "Story Arc" versus "Story"

2007-09-18T05:37:08.0000Z

I've created my own types as an experiment. I made "Comic Book Work" to represent a story with a single set of creators, which might be a graphic novel, or a sequence of issues. A Comic Book Work has a list of Contributions from people. I also created a "Comic Book Contribution" which is a pair consisting of: (Role: of type profession) (Contributor: of type Person) and (Notes: of type text). A Comic Book Work can also have a reference to a "Comic Book Series" if it occurs as part of an ongoing series (it doesn't have to). I'm not sure other people can see my types and data. I've tried to open it up. Can other people see the types, and the data I entered? http://www.freebase.com/view/domain/user/quenelle/default_domain

Comic Book Character: A couple suggestions

2007-08-23T21:16:44.0007Z

Actually to clarify: adding an included type does not fix the problem of redundant properties. In fact it forces the issue by guaranteeing that the topic has both of those types. Fixing it will require adding the included type, migrating the existing values, and then removing the property from the type. So it will take a little bit of time and effort.

Comic Book Character: A couple suggestions

2007-08-23T19:15:39.0000Z

Thanks Dan,

I'm right there with you on the foes and allies properties. Also, I'll shuffle some things around a bit to get it to fit well with fictional characters and go ahead and and the included type.

Tristan

Comic Book Story: "Story Arc" versus "Story"

2007-08-23T06:31:48.0053Z

At the risk of belaboring this a bit, I have to say that I agree with quenelle since I'm running into many of the same problems as him.

For example, I'm trying to figure out how to enter Batman: A Death in the Family into the KB, a story arc containing four issues. I'd like to enter the artists, the writers, and the 4 prominent characters involved in the story. The way it is currently modeled though, instead of 8 people I would have to enter 32. It also requires adding 4 individual story components, on top of the 4 issues that I would otherwise enter, presumably linking the correct image from the corresponding issue for each. It is a lot of extra work for adding a single story-arc.

Most storylines in comics these days seem to last for multiple issues, all with the same artists and characters. I'm happy to help you guys out by entering some of the information I enjoy, but this level of repetitious entry quickly becomes tedious and isn't something I can imagine myself or others doing. It seems to me that if you depend on voluntary user input, that it should be crucially important to keep things simple for the user to enter.

I'm not quite sure I follow your point on optional properties making queries difficult. So perhaps that's part of my problem. I'm new to freebase but it's rare that I see a topic with all of its properties filled in. It also seems to me that the current representation would cause the same sorts of problems with a query by page or issue. On top of that, it would create unnecessary specification for queries by artist or character, which I imagine would be more common. For example, I imagine a user querying for stories involving the Joker would prefer to see "A Death in the Family" rather than "A Death in the Family, Pt. 1", "A Death in the Family, Pt. 2", etc., especially since the latter could have been retrieved from a query over issues rather than stories. Maybe you can give a specific example of a query that would cause problems under quenelle's suggestion but not under the current implementation? That would help me understand.

I do recognize that some large arcs/crossovers can involve multiple artists, characters, and plot-lines. (eg Marvel's Infinity War, DC's Knightfall). But given the trade-offs, it makes more sense to me to implement that either with a new "cross-over story" type or maybe even with some transitive relation allowing stories to contain other stories. Knightfall is a particularly horrifying example since it is an umbrella title for the four sub-story-arcs Knightfall, Kinghtquest, KnightsEnd, and the Aftermath, containing 73 individual issues in all.

Just so we're on the same page, the way I envision quenelle's suggestion working is with a multiple-value property called something like "Told In", where each value could contain an issue and optionally, a starting and ending page. (Could also do it with separate properties for Issues and Pages but that would probably just complicate things).

Looking forward to your response.

Comic Book Character: A couple suggestions

2007-08-23T03:06:10.0012Z

Thanks for all the new comic book types, Tristan! I'll definitely be spending a lot of time using these.

One suggestion I have though is to make "Fictional Character" be one of the included types for "Comic Book Character". You'll see that "TV Character" and "Film Character" for example, did the same thing. That way we don't get multiple properties for Creator and Universes when it's listed as both types (which it pretty much always should be).

I'd also like to suggest including a property for a character's traditional foes, and maybe for the traditional allies as well.

Thanks again for the great work!
Dan

Comic Book Story: "Story Arc" versus "Story"

2007-08-07T19:05:53.0007Z

I think you need to connect the writers and artists to the individual story, because you can very easily have arcs which encompass the work of many artists and writers.

In this sort of modeling I've tried to use the finest grain detail necessary for the vast majority of situations. Our current model does make more work from a data entry standpoint (though we have autocomplete, so that helps), but the way your proposing I think makes it far too difficult to query.

We will most likely have loading from spreadsheets at some point in the future (we have internal tools now that are just too dangerous for the outside world). So if you want to use spreadsheets, we could probably load it.

Comic Book Story: "Story Arc" versus "Story"

2007-08-05T03:36:07.0007Z

Okay, I worked on a new type. I've created types in my own domain and exported them. There's one called "Comic Book Work" which can designate two things: the list of contributions by artist, writer etc, and also a link to the existing "Comic Book Series" data type. Give them a look and see what you think. I'm not sure how to make use of other people's types at this point. I made some and exported them. Let me know if I have to do anything else to make them visible.

Comic Book Story: "Story Arc" versus "Story"

2007-08-05T00:25:58.0000Z

Arg, sorry. I thought of another snag. One problem is that the creator names and roles in most of my comics are all the same for all the issues that are part of a "Story Arc", but in the current heirarchy that information is attached to the "Story" not the "Story Arc". That's one of the things that originally steered me toward wanting to say that my two issues in the example above were part of a single "Story" because the creative team and other supporting details are exatly the same. It seems really flexible if I can say a "Story" has a "location". I found some food for thought here: http://freebase.com/view/?id=%239202a8c04000641f8000000005136237 .

Comic Book Story: "Story Arc" versus "Story"

2007-08-04T23:20:01.0007Z

Okay. Just to make sure I understand. I have two comics in front of me. I want to enter their basic information (including story name). I create the following objects:
Story Arc:Rainbow Zebras ---
Story: Rainbow Zebras Part 1 (Part of Story Arc -> Rainbow Zebras) ---
Story: Rainbow Zebras Part 2 (Part of Story Arc -> Rainbow Zebras) ---
Comic Book Issue: Amazing Nobody #103 (Has Story -> Rainbow Zebras Part 1, Part of Series -> Amazing Nobody) ---
Comic Book Issue: Amazing Nobody #104 (Has Story -> Rainbow Zebras Part 2, Part of Series -> Amazing Nobody) ---
Comic Book Series: Amazing Nobody ---

That seems to be a little more clicking than I was hoping for, since I'm currently entering this data manually.
I'll go search on this site and see if there is a spreadsheet upload functionality. It might be easier to
type a few pages of data into a spreadsheet then upload it, if I can configure the processing of a table
to automatically creat objects for me.

Comic Book Story: "Story Arc" versus "Story"

2007-08-01T18:26:09.0000Z

Exactly, except for our purposes both parts are stories (for lack of a better word). I also don't think "part of story arc" would even have to be unique, as "Rainbow Zebras" could be part of some larger cross-over event.

Thinking more about all this, I realize that the case might come up where some issues are sort of "weakly" part of an arc. For example there might be some general continuity between the issues and references to the events, but nothing really taking place over the two issues. I suppose you'd have to leave it to the fans of that particular series to determine if it warranted the creation of a story arc.

I'm glad we're discussing all this, as it will be good fodder to use in the documentation for story arc (which I seem to have been putting off to everyone's detriment).

Comic Book Story: "Story Arc" versus "Story"

2007-08-01T04:36:00.0007Z

Okay, help me understand. I have two comic issues. Amazing Nobody #103 and Amazing Nobody #104. The first one says in front: "Rainbow Zebras Part 1". Issues #104 says at the front: "Rainbow Zebras Part 2". Tell me the way to record that using the existing types. At the end of issue number #103 there is a cliffhanger. It seems clear to me that issue #103 does not constitute a "Story" by itself. But I can live with it, if that's the model we've chosen to use. Do I say that #103 has a story, and #104 has a story, and both stories are part of a story arc called "Rainbow Zebras"?

Comic Book Story: "Story Arc" versus "Story"

2007-07-31T01:49:42.0007Z

But what if a story consists of multiple sub-issue stories? I think story-arc combined with making an issue entity for every issue and a story entity for every story contained therein is our best bet.

Generally we try avoid optional properties if we can, so it's somewhat hard to find. I think it shows up in the politics domain a bit.

Also is there a case you can think of that the current model wouldn't handle? I haven't been able to think of any, so I'm not inclined to change it in a hurry. But let me know if there's something bothering you about it.

Comic Book Story Arc: Same as Comic Book Story?

2007-07-29T05:46:24.0007Z

Sorry about that, now I understand the purpose of "Comic Book Story Arc".
A story arc is a combination of multiple stories.

Comic Book Story: "Story Arc" versus "Story"

2007-07-29T05:44:45.0000Z

I understand the problems with having properties which are sometimes used and sometimes not. I think that means you have to distinguish between the two kinds of stories. The common mode for modern comics is to have a story-like narrative thread last for several issues. But I don't see how to represent that. Also, I think representing that using two full-blown "Issues" objects might be overkill, when all you need is two integers to represent the starting and ending issues of the mutli-issue story. Perhaps we could use two types.

Comic Book Multi-Issue Story
-- start issue
-- end issue
-- "Comic Book Story"

Comic Book Sub-Issue Story
-- start page
-- end page
-- "Comic Book Story"

This seems a little clumsy. I might actually prefer the optional parts of a story that
I originally described, even though I it will cause the searching problems you described.
But the searching and presentation problems you described would apply equally if we
used different types for the different kinds of story sequences, right?

Are there other examples of similar optional properties in freebase? I'll see if I can find
any similar examples, and come back and post them here.

Comic Book Story Arc: Same as Comic Book Story?

2007-07-26T18:23:02.0007Z

The type description of Comic Book Story offers an explanation:

"This type is used to model the story specific information about a comic book.

"Here you can record the artists and writers of a story and also continuity infomation and what characters and locations were featured.

"A handy feature is the ability to specify what story arc a particular story is a part of (you can for instance say what stories are part of the "The Infinity Guantlet" storyline)."

Sounds to me like many stories could belong to the same story arc.

Comic Book Story Arc: merge

2007-07-26T07:05:50.0004Z

I think "Comic Book Story Arc" should be made a synonym for "Comic Book Story". A story might be a part of one issue (so it might have starting and ending pages) or it might consist of multiple complete comics, in which case it has a starting and ending issue and a "series" link pointing at a "Comic Book Series". Someone might want to create specific "issue" instances, or they might only want to add a link to the "series" which this story is a part of.

Comic Book Story: Need beginning and ending issue

2007-07-26T07:03:29.0011Z

I think "Comic Book Story" needs "Beginning Issue" and "Ending Issue" links. Which are of type "Comic Book Issue".

Comic Book Issue: Please add "Cover Artist"

2007-07-26T06:54:56.0011Z

Many comics only record a "cover artist". They might collaborate with letters, etc, but that information is not recorded. It would be appropriate for me to be able to simply record one overall "cover artist" in that case.

Comic Books: Even without data loads

2007-07-26T06:33:15.0011Z

If we get enough data typed and input, and build a custom application on top of it, we'll get people actually using it for reference. At that point someone will figure out how to slurp up the latest data.

Comic Book Story Arc: Same as Comic Book Story?

2007-07-26T06:23:44.0011Z

What's the difference between Comic Book Story and Comic Book Story Arc?

Comic Books: Regular data loads

2007-07-21T14:16:06.0004Z

Just realised I'd posted this to the Comic Strips domain by accident, whoops. My throughts about getting regular data about comic books below.

Comics are an area where a large amount of information is produced on a regular basis. A distributor will stock roughly 5000 new items every month. A lot of information about these titles is probably held somewhere, is looking for regular loads from distributors / publishers (Marvel, DC, Diamond etc.) something that Freebase is about - for the sake of keeping information up to date - or are we looking for a more community based approach.

Of course, after this question is answered we still need to get hold of said information - but that's a fight for another day.