10

The state of digital comic book metadata is a mess. There is not really a standard format if the metadata even exists at all. All digital comic books consist of is a zip or rar with ordered images and potentially some type of file to store metadata. The closest thing to a standard is the Comic Rack format of metadata and even that is not very widespread. There exists a project called comictagger(on github) that attempts to assign metadata in Comic Rack format but it is somewhat unpolished yet provides a solid feature set.

I am planning on making a program to organize comics based on metadata attributes and am frustrated with the lack of consistency in this department. This isn't really a problem because of any developers but I would argue more so due to the organization of comic books themselves. For example, the term volume can have a different meaning based on who is asked or what context is used. The redundancy between issues and trade paperbacks can also lead to confusion and logistical problems. I just wish we already had a widespread schema in place for comic books metadata already.

Comments
  • 2
    If you start with that, maybe also contribute to any RFC somehow related to comics metadata and implement in few open source comic compositioning software (if any).
  • 2
    PDF can sort of work, but it's not ideal

    I wanted to do something similar in the past and looked at the epub format – it's awful.
  • 5
    > digital comic book metadata is a mess

    Now HERE is a unique rant.
  • 3
    Great rant. Welcome.
    But just out of curiosity, what's going on with your tags?
  • 0
    Not into comics myself - but should their meta data needs not pretty much match the meta data needs of other periodics.
    Isn't there an established format for dime novels, news papers or multi volume literature?
    Also there are the audio meta data formats like ID3, which could be updated to include the missing fields needed for periodic literature...
  • 1
    @LotsOfCaffeine
    I agree pdf does have its merits but the standard distribution of digital comics is cbr/cbz and I'd like to try and help stick to some kind of standard if I can
  • 1
    @Oktokolo The meta data problem exists partially because comics themselves are inconsistent in their implementation and often "double back" on themselves and reboot under the same name but different volumes. Issues are the smallest unit. Trade Paperback consist of round 6 issues typically, and volumes can be comprised of tpb. A better explanation can be found here: https://bookriot.com/guide-comics-t...
  • 1
    @MorningLight I heard of those before, but really they're just zip files with numbered images.

    If you do make a nice format with metadata in it lemme know, I half finished a tool that compiles images to a bundles file
  • 0
Add Comment