Monthly Statistics

During January the Metron Project added the following to its database:

• Users: 52
• Issues: 1,038
• Creators: 326
• Characters: 326

Thanks to everyone that contributed!

Grand Comics Database (GCD) IDs

Recently support for GCD ID support was added and currently about 92% of the issues on the site has had them added.

Alternative / Legacy Numbering

Recently, Metron added a new field to track alternative / legacy numbering, which are used primarily with DC & Marvel comics with their long-running characters.

In addition, I've also made changes to the filter so that issue numbers will be not case-sensitive when searched, which will improve matching for issue like The Amazing Spider-Man (2022) #65.DEATHS.

I'm planning to add a new param to the API that will allow you to search the number and alternative number fields at the same time, but there isn't an ETA when that will be added.

URL Redirects

Recently, support for ID URL Redirects was added, so if you know the Metron ID number for an issue it will redirect to the correct page. For example, https://metron.cloud/issue/133777/ will redirect you to the detail page for The Amazing Spider-Man (2022) #66.

Digital Releases

Recently a decision was made not to include digital releases that are 5 pages or less, like the Marvel Legacy Primer Pages. If you have questions whether a release should be added or not, you can ask on the Discussions Page or on Matrix.

International Support

In the effort to add support to the site for Non-US publishers, a country field has been added to the Publisher model, though only the United States will be valid. Modifying the price field for an issue to handle different currencies still needs to be done, but with some luck I'll find some time to do it this year.

OpenCollective

We've recently set up an account at Open Collective if you wish to help defray the server costs and help with increasing future server capacity.

Anyway, I think that covers most of the changes to the site that were made this month. Take care!

Monthly Statistics

During December the Metron Project added the following to its database:

• Users: 39
• Issues: 823
• Creators: 259
• Characters: 413

2024 Annual Statistics

During 2024 the Metron Project added the following to its database:

• Users: 566
• Issues: 33,784
• Creators: 2,283
• Characters: 7,748

Thanks to everyone that contributed!

Grand Comics Database (GCD) ID Support

Recently support for GCD ID's was added to the site, and we've currently linked about 50% of the issues on the site, and with luck, should be completed in the next week or so.

Potential January Projects

I'm looking at some small projects to work on in January, and some potential ones I'm thinking about are:

• Add Legacy Numbering field
• Alternative Series Name field
• Advanced Resources (Series, Issues, etc) Search
• Resource ID URLS

Not sure which ones (or any) will be implemented, but I'm planning to dig into them a bit more in the next few weeks.

OpenCollective

We've recently set up an account at Open Collective if you wish to help defray the server costs and help with increasing future server capacity.

Anyway, that's all I got for now, hope everyone had a great holiday and are enjoying New Years day. Take Care!

One of the items I've been asked about the most for the project, especially when Comic Vine goes down, is how to donate to the project to help the server keep up with the demands from our users. Well, I finally found some time yesterday to set up an account with Open Collective, so the project can now accept donations to help cover server and development costs. The page currently doesn't have much beyond some basic financial contributions options, but once I read through the documentation a bit more I'll look into filling it out a bit more.

I've been asked about adding a paid tiered for an increase in the API rate limit, but at this time I'm not planning on adding that, but who knows maybe sometime in the future if there is enough demand (and I have the time to implement it) it might be worthwhile to pursue.

If you have any questions or suggestions, don't hesitate to e-mail me or ping me on Matrix.

Monthly Statistics

During November the Metron Project added the following to its database:

• Users: 31
• Issues: 2,210
• Creators: 104
• Characters: 426

Thanks to everyone that contributed!

Metron-Tagger v3.1.0

I released a new version of Metron-Tagger today that adds the ability to migrate data from a comic that contains a ComicInfo.xml.

The conversion from ComicInfo.xml -> MetronInfo.xml does have some caveats though:

• Elements containing data with a comma in a delimited ComicInfo element. If for example, the Title element contained a story call "Babs: True Blue, I Love You" and it was originally written with a tool other than Metron-Tagger it will split the story into two element items: Babs: True Blue and I Love You .
• Ratings. We map these to the enums used in MetronInfo, but it's not perfect since the ComicInfo documentation isn't terribly clear how it defines it values, so if you feel our mapping is incorrect please notify us and explain what it should be. Also, I've seen some users use non-valid values which obviously won't work.
• Series Format. We've also done our best to map the series format, but this is even less defined the age rating since this is just a text element in the schema, and could be anything. We've used the values in Comic-Tagger to handle the conversion, but this isn't perfect.

To migrate your ComicInfo.xml to MetronInfo.xml without any online lookup would simply run:

metron-tagger --migrate /path/to/comics

If you wanted to tag you comics with data from the Metron Comic Book Database, and migrate the data from the existing ComicInfo.xml for those comics not on Metron, you would run:

metron-tagger -om --migrate /path/to/comics

If you run across any bugs or have suggestions for improvements, please file a Bug Report or Feature Request.

Server Upgrade

Finally got around to upgrading the server, and it was fairly uneventful. Yay! 🎉

OpenCollective

The main repository has finally reached 100 stars, and so most likely in the next week or two, I'll set up a funding option at Open Collective to help defray the server costs and help with increasing future server capacity.

Future

Now the bulk of the work is done with getting the MetronInfo out the door and some initial tooling to generate them, I'm planning to work on some low-hanging bugs with the website over the next month or so, before starting any large scale projects.

Anyway, that's all I've got for this month. Take care!

I'm happy to announce the v1.0 of the MetronInfo schema has been finalized and is now ready to be used by developers and consumers. So, I'll start off by answering some questions (most of this will be from the projects README).

What is it?

MetronInfo is a new xml document type that fixes some deficiencies that exist in the current de facto xml file, ComicInfo.xml, to store metadata for a comic. Some of our improvements include:

• Addition elements to track information that are not included with the current standard.
• Better handling of data types. For instance, instead of using delimited strings we use arrays of elements.
• Elements to track where the data was obtained from.
• id attributes for resources (Characters, Creators, etc.), so items with different names can be associated correctly.

Is the schema only for the Metron Database?

No, the schema only has Metron in the name since almost every other format has Comic in the name, and the originating author hates naming projects, so he went with the simplest choice. 😄 It was designed to be used for any of the comic resources (Comic Vine, AniList, etc.)

Where can I find the schemas?

Version 1.0 of the schema is located in schema directory

Is there documentation for it?

Yes, there is documentation describing the elements usage and also a Matrix to help with age rating mapping.

How can I validate my XML?

It's recommended that any software that writes the XML make use of the schema to validate, so consumers of the XML document can be sure of its data. The schema use XSD 1.1, so you need to make sure your validation code uses that instead of XSD 1.0.

For example to validate the XML in python:

from pathlib import Path
from xmlschema import XMLSchema11, XMLSchemaValidationError

xsd = Path("/home/user/MetronInfo.xsd")
xml = Path("/home/user/MetronInfo.xml")

schema = XMLSchema11(xsd)
try:
    schema.validate(xml)
except XMLSchemaValidationError as e:
    print(f"Failed to validate XML: {e!r}")
    exit(1)

# Code to write / read the xml file

What software currently supports it?

Currently, the following software does:

• Metron-Tagger - Commandline tool to tag comic with metadata ( MetronInfo or ComicInfo) from Metron Comic Book Database.

If you are a developer that has added support for MetronInfo.xml to your software, please create a PR to update the README or contact me.

Future

One of the goals of the project was to be responsive to the needs of the community, so if you have suggestion for improvements to the schema please file a feature request, bug report, or start a discussion.

Thanks

I'd like to thank everyone that has contributed to the schema, and in particular AJ, Buried-In-Code, and Joe who have helped out a lot in the last few months.

Ok, been fairly busy the last couple of months so naturally blogging has taken a back-burner. So, here's a summary of what's been going on the last few months.

Monthly Statistics

During August the Metron Project added the following to its database:

• Users: 41
• Issues: 1,377
• Creators: 147
• Characters: 346

During September the following was added:

• Users: 100
• Issues: 1,330
• Creators: 124
• Characters: 379

During October the following was added:

• Users: 51
• Issues: 1,996
• Creators: 122
• Characters: 740

Comic Vine Outage

Comic Vine went down at the end of September for about 6 days, so we saw an influx of new users which necessitated in increasing our server's capacity. One thing this episode brought to light out was the need for the project to accept donations for future infrastructure costs (since I'm currently covering the server costs).

To help us set this up it would be greatly appreciated if you could star the repository since one of the requirements to set up an account on Open Collective is to have 100 stars.

Server OS Upgrade

I had planned to upgrade the server in August, but y'know... life. Anyway, I'm tentatively planning to upgrade Metron's operating system on November 16th, so there might be some downtime (most likely a few hours) when I do that. I'll post a notification on the site for the week leading to the upgrade.

MetronInfo.xml

The last couple of months there has been a bunch of work done on finalizing the MetronInfo.xsd by Joe, AJ, Buried-In-Code and myself, and I believe there are just a couple of outstanding items that need a resolution. Once that is done, I'll write up a announcement blog post.

Anyway, that's all I've got for this month. Take care!

Spent the weekend working on finally adding support for Publisher's imprints. Before this, Metron simply lumped Publishers and Imprint together under the Publisher views which was not ideal, but this change will allow them to be separated.

New views, filters, and API endpoints have been added for this feature, so if you see anything missing or behaving not as expected, please open a bug report.

In addition, I've released new version of Darkseid, Mokarri, and Metron-Tagger that add support for imprints. And as always, if you discover any bugs, it would be appreciated if you opened a report in the appropriate git repository.

Anyway, that's all I got for now. Take care!

Monthly Statistics

During July the Metron Project added the following to its database:

• Users: 47
• Issues: 1,940
• Creators: 71
• Characters: 329

Thanks to everyone that contributed!

More Database Series Type Changes

Made a couple of changes to some Series Type names on Metron based on some suggestions from Buried-In-Code over on Matrix. They include:

• Change Digital Chapters to Digital Chapter
• Change Hard Cover to Hardcover

If you wish to update your existing ComicInfo.xml metadata, I've released a new version of Karkas that addresses these changes. You can download this version from this link, and just install it by running:

pipx install /path/to/karkas-1.2.0-py3-none-any.whl

Then just run:

karkas /path/to/comics

Server OS Upgrade

I'm tentatively planning to upgrade Metron's operating system later this month, so there might be some downtime (most likely a few hours) when I do that. Once I have a better idea what changes this version has (PostgreSQL-16.2, Python-3.12, etc.) I'll have a better idea the work involved. Regardless, I'll post a notification on the site for the week leading to the upgrade, which most likely will occur on a Saturday.

Anyway, that's all I've got for this month. Take care!

Monthly Statistics

During June the Metron Project added the following to its database:

• Users: 26
• Issues: 3,025
• Creators: 189
• Characters: 822

Thanks to everyone that contributed!

Database Series Type Changes

Was discussing changes to the MetronInfo schema with the developer of Kavita, and it got me thinking about the Series Types that Metron uses.

Based on that discussion, we've consolidated Cancelled and Ongoing types to Single Issue, changed Annual Series to Annual, and also add Omnibus which would give us the following values:

• Annual: An over-sized special of a comic book that is released in addition to the regular comics in that series.
• Digital Chapters: This is where a comic is released in a digital format, but can sometimes be released in print later.
• Graphic Novel: This is a comic book that comes out in the trade paperback/hardcover format without being in the serial single issue format beforehand.
• Hardcover: Similar to a Trade Paperback but the cover has a very thick stock just like a hardcover novel.
• Limited Series: This is a comic series that has a set number of issues.
• Omnibus: These are very large number of single issues collected in one edition.
• One-Shot: A story that is contained to a single issue.
• Single Issue: This is the serial magazine-style format of a comic. For example, Action Comics v1 #2.
• Trade Paperback: This is the most common kind of collected edition where it is usually collecting 6-12 single issues.

Note: Series Types descriptions are from this excellent article at How to Love Comics

In addition to those changes, we've added a new database field status to the Series model to track a series' status. The values for this field are as follows:

• Cancelled: Used when a Single Issue or Annual series is ended. Sometimes can be used when a Limited series is abandoned before completing its story.
• Complete: Commonly used when a Limited, One-Shot, Graphic Novel, Hardcover, Omnibus, or Digital Chapters series is ended.
• Hiatus: When a series stops publishing before ending with the expectation that it will be finished at a later date.
• Ongoing: Used with the Single Issue or Annual series while it is still being published.

To help users update their existing comics with the new values without having to use Metron's API to re-tag their comics, I've written Karkas which will change the Format element of a comics ComicInfo.xml to Single Issue if they are currently Cancelled or Ongoing, and Annual if the value is Annual Series. Since this is a program that most likely will only be used once I've decided to not publish it to PyPi, but you can grab the wheel from here.

To install it you just need to run:

wget https://static.metron.cloud/misc/karkas-1.0.0-py3-none-any.whl
pipx install karkas-1.0.0-py3-none-any.whl

Then just run:

karkas /path/to/comics

In the next day or so, I'll be releasing a new version of Mokkari that will include the new Series Status field.

If you run into any problems, please open a bug report with the appropriate project, i.e. Metron, Karkas, Mokkari, etc.

Anyway, that's all I've got for this month. Take care!

Monthly Statistics

During May the Metron Project added the following to its database:

• Users: 39
• Issues: 3,140
• Creators: 230
• Characters: 852

Thanks to everyone that contributed!

API Change

A new parameter, rating, was added to the issue endpoint and accepts the follow case-insensitive values:

• Unknown
• Everyone
• Teen
• Mature
• Teen Plus
• CCA

An example of its usage would be: https://metron.cloud/api/issue/?publisher_name=dynamite&rating=teen

Metron-Tagger

Released a new version of Metron-Tagger, which contains a couple of new features/changes:

• Digital Comics Renaming: When renaming a digital-only comic, Digital Chapter will be appended to the filename.
• Remove Non-Valid Metadata Option: Using the --remove-non-valid option with the --validate option will remove any comicinfo.xml that is not valid.
• Removed Oddball Rename Tokens: Removed the genre, story titles, language, critical rating, and story arc tokens from the renaming templates since they are not commonly used.

Well, that's all I got for this month. Take care!