Grand Comics Database (GCD) Comic Issue Scraper
Grand Comics Database (GCD) Comic Issue Scraper
Extract comprehensive bibliographic data for comic book issues from the Grand Comics Database public API.
The Grand Comics Database (comics.org) is the most authoritative open comics catalog on the web — over 2 million issues across 229,000+ series from 17,000+ publishers worldwide. While the GCD website is Cloudflare-protected, the /api/ endpoints are publicly accessible and return clean JSON with no challenge. This actor uses the API path exclusively — no browser required.
What you get
Each record includes:
- Issue identity — GCD issue ID, series ID, series name, issue number, volume, title
- Publication details — publication date, on-sale date, key date, cover price (+ currency), page count, country, language
- Barcodes & identifiers — barcode, ISBN, indicia publisher
- Creator credits — per-story writer, penciller, inker, colorist, letterer, editor credits (in structured string format)
- Story details — story count, story titles, character lists, genre tags, reprint notes
- Variant linkage —
variant_of_idandis_variantflag for variant cover tracking
Three crawl modes
| Mode | Description |
|---|---|
series_walk |
Walk all GCD series page by page — full catalog (229K+ series → 2M+ issues) |
publisher_walk |
Scope to specific publishers by ID (e.g. 78 = Marvel, 18 = DC) |
by_series_ids |
Fetch issues for a specific list of GCD series IDs |
Input
| Field | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
mode |
string | Crawl mode: series_walk (default), publisher_walk, or by_series_ids |
maxItems |
integer | Maximum number of issue records to return (0 = unlimited; default 15) |
seriesIds |
array | GCD series IDs to scrape (mode by_series_ids only) |
publisherIds |
array | GCD publisher IDs to filter by (mode publisher_walk only) |
startPage |
integer | Series page to start from in series_walk mode (default 1) |
Output dataset fields
| Field | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
gcd_issue_id |
integer | GCD database ID for the issue |
issue_url |
string | Canonical API URL for the issue |
series_id |
integer | GCD series ID (for joining with series data) |
series_name |
string | Series name with year, e.g. "Amazing Spider-Man (1963 series)" |
issue_number |
string | Issue number as published |
volume |
string | Volume designation |
title |
string | Issue title (if any) |
publication_date |
string | Human-readable publication date |
on_sale_date |
string | On-sale date (when available) |
key_date |
string | GCD sortable key date (YYYY-MM-DD format) |
price |
string | Cover price (numeric portion) |
currency |
string | Currency code (USD, GBP, EUR, etc.) |
pages |
integer | Page count |
barcode |
string | UPC barcode |
isbn |
string | ISBN (when available) |
editing_credits |
string | Editor credits |
cover_image_url |
string | Cover image URL (null — not available via GCD API) |
variant_of_id |
integer | GCD ID of the base issue (for variant covers) |
is_variant |
boolean | True if this is a variant cover |
story_count |
integer | Number of stories in the issue |
story_titles |
string | Story titles joined by " | " |
story_credits |
string | Creator credits per story joined by " || " |
characters |
string | Character appearances |
genre |
string | Genre tags |
reprint_notes |
string | Reprint notes |
indicia_publisher |
string | Indicia publisher name |
Use cases
- Comic price guides — join GCD issue records with pricing data (PriceCharting, GoCollect) via
series_id/gcd_issue_id - Collection management — build a personal or dealer catalog of owned/wanted issues
- Market research — identify key issue variants, first appearances, creator runs
- Publisher catalogs — enumerate complete run data for any publisher
- Data enrichment — supplement your comic database with bibliographic depth
GCD data licensing
GCD data is released under a Creative Commons license (CC-BY-SA). Commercial use with attribution is permitted. See comics.org for details.
Rate limits
The GCD API is a community-run server. This actor uses conservative concurrency (8 parallel issue fetches) with 200ms delay between series pages and 50ms between issue fetches to stay well within polite-use limits.
Notes
publisher,publisher_id,country, andlanguageare not returned on the issue API endpoint; they live on the series object. Useseries_idto join against a separate series walk if you need these fields.cover_image_urlis always null — the GCD API does not expose image URLs for individual issues.