Starting your Comicster Collection

Kicking off your Comicster collection is easy! Let's walk through it:

Creating the Collection File

First, open Comicster and create your collection file. You can do that a couple of ways:

• Click "Start a new collection" on the welcome screen
• Open the "Collection" menu and click "New"
• Press Ctrl+N on your keyboard

Adding a Title

Now let's add our first title. In this example, I am going to tell Comicster that I have all 147 issues of the Silver Surfer run from 1987.

Adding a title to your collection can be done in two ways:

• Open the "Insert" menu and click "Title"
• Press Ctrl+Shift+T on your keyboard

Either of those options will open the "New Title" dialog box, where you'll be prompted to enter the name of the title.

1. In the "Name" field, type "Silver Surfer" (without the quotes, of course)
2. Because we're creating a new title, we get the chance here to enter the issues we already own for this title. So, down in the "Issues" field at the bottom of the dialog, we'll type "0..146".

(If you didn't know, Silver Surfer volume 3 had a special "0" issue, and ended with issue number 146, totalling 147 issues.)

At this point you're done. You can, if you like, fill in the "Volume" field with "3" and the "Year" field with "1987", and you can enter short summary of the title, like, "The Surfer finally escapes Earth"; but if you don't need that extra information, just press Enter or click the "OK" button and the title (and its issues) will be added to your collection.

Saving your Collection

As with any file-based application, it's a good idea to save your file now and then while using Comicster. We'll do that now before we continue.

To save your collection:

• Open the "Collection" menu and click "Save Untitled", or
• Press Ctrl+S on your keyboard

Because this is a new collection, you'll be asked to specify a filename. You won't be asked again - subsequent saves will simply save over the same file.

Adding a Publisher

The 1987 Silver Surfer series was, of course, published by Marvel. Let's add Marvel to our collection so we can update the title to reflect that.

You can view publishers at any time by switching to the "Publishers" view by clicking on the second button at the lower left of the main window, but we won't need to do that right now.

Creating a publisher can again be done in two ways:

• Open the "Insert" menu and click "Publisher"
• Press Ctrl+Shift+P on your keyboard

You'll see the "New Publisher" dialog asking you for the name of the publisher. Type "Marvel", and optionally enter a description of the company and its URI (web address) of "http://www.marvel.com". Press Enter or click OK and you're done.

Now let's update our Silver Surfer title.

Click once on the "Silver Surfer" entry in the tree on the left, then click the "Properties" button or press Alt+R on your keyboard. That'll open up the familiar title dialog and let you edit the title.

Drop down the "Publisher" field's list and select "Marvel", then click "OK".

If you're using the default skin, you'll notice that the preview pane on the right now displays "Published by Marvel" under your title. You can click on the word "Marvel" and Comicster will navigate to that publisher over on the Publishers view. You'll still see all of the Silver Surfer issues in the center pane, because Comicster knows that all of those issues were published by Marvel.

Editing an Issue

Let's add a few more details to one of our issues.

Select issue #1 in the list of Silver Surfer issues, and click the Properties button to open up the "Issue Properties" dialog.

The story title for issue 1 was "Free!" so enter that text in the "Story Title(s)" field.

The cover price was $1.25, so switch to the "Details" tab and enter 1.25 into the "Cover Price" field.

Click OK, and you'll see your details reflected in the preview pane for the issue.

Adding Issue Credits and Appearances

Lastly, let's add some creators and characters to issue #1 of our Silver Surfer series.

In the preview pane you'll see a link with the text "Add a credit...". Click on that to bring up the "New Credit in Silver Surfer 1" dialog. We'll add the writer, Steve Englehart, so type his name into the "Name" field, and type "Writer" into the "Details" field. You'll notice that as you start typing "Writer" the text is automatically filled in. There are a bunch of "roles" that Comicster knows about to save you typing them.

Click OK and you'll see that Steve Englehart has been credited as the writer in your issue.

Now click the link that reads "Add an appearance..." which will open the "New Appearance in Silver Surfer 1" dialog. We'll add the Surfer himself, so type "Silver Surfer" into the "Name" field. The Surfer's appearance in his own book isn't really noteworthy, so let's not worry about filling in the "Details" field. Click OK and you're done.

Keep Going!

There's still lots to explore in Comicster. We've barely scratched the surface in this article. This should be enough information, though, to get you started.