Two boxes of comics: single issues, read from photographs of the bagged copies, gathered into the runs they belong to, matched to reference sources, and given a synopsis where a source could support one.
This is the collection of the person who makes these catalogues, shown as it is in use, with nothing removed. The few issues whose reading is still uncertain are left in, marked, because confirming them is part of the work. Nothing about value is recorded: no prices, no grades. The synopses are placeholders; see “How this was made” below.
Each run shows which numbers are held and which are missing. Open its issues to see the grid, then choose an issue for its cover, its stories, the characters featured and its synopsis. Add notes of your own to any run.
How many issues carry a cover date in each decade (or, where the date couldn't be read, the year their series began).
Comics live in bags and boxes, not on shelves, so there are no spines to read. The issues were laid out overlapping, a dozen to a photograph, so the top strip of each cover (title, number, cover date) stood in for the spine. Each reading was written down with a note on how sure it was.
Issues were counted by series, number and variant, never by photograph, so a copy caught in two pictures is listed once. Series that changed title but kept their numbering are shown as one run, and the gaps in each run are shown with the numbers held.
Each run was matched to a reference article, and each issue to its page in a public reference wiki, which gave its story titles, the characters featured, a picture of the cover and the material for a synopsis. Where the reference had nothing to say, the issue keeps its story titles and says so.
The photographs of these comics were read with the help of a cloud AI service. In a client's catalogue, anything drawn from the client's own record is read on systems under the practice's control, or by hand; it is never sent to a cloud AI service.
The synopses here marked as placeholders were drafted by AI from the reference page each one links to, to show where that text would sit. A client's catalogue would use a licensed reference work, credited, or text written by the person making the catalogue. No passage in anything delivered to a family is drafted by a text generator.
The reading, the gathering into runs, the checking against reference sources and the notes field are the kind of work this catalogue is meant to show.