I was inspired, yesterday to consider the object on the front of every current comic book I know of right now–the bar-codes. While the inspiring piece looked at a different perspective of the bar-code, I wish to expose what it is to the face of a comic book. The bar-code is a defacing piece of garbage.
Every week I see book after book scared by this mark–I don’t give it much thought because I have been brain washed to understand it. But I don’t understand it. Why do the artists allow such a mark appear on their pictures?
Why must we place this bar-code on the front of a comic book, when it could easily go on the back? Paperback books place the bar-code on the back–never to be noticed by the consumer. It doesn’t effect the efficiency of the stores.
I’m sure that the bar code on the front is merely, because the publisher doesn’t want to scare the advertisements in the back–noooo, we wouldn’t want to do that. Would they rather cover the details and cheapen the art that has been drawn? The market is for comic books. Bar-codes are understandable–it is time for the advertisers to feel the pain and absorb the rectangular box.  After all ,the back of the comic books are always covered by the bag and the board in the end.
Greg Skluzacek says
I feel your pain… I’ve often wondered the same thing myself. Here’s all this beautiful artwork and then comes along this ugly bar code to muck it up. In fact if you look at many products in the grocery store, most of their bar codes are not on the front where it can interfere with the product’s eye appeal to the customer. The bar codes are on the bottom of the box or on the sides or back, not on the front!
FYI… these are UPC codes and the comic book UPC code deviates from the standard somewhat: the Company Prefix (CP) which is the first 6 to 9 digits of the comic book UPC code is followed by the Item Reference (IR) which is the next 3 to 6 digits. Additionally comic books will have an additional 5 digits that identify the issue number.
In theory the comic book UPC code could be used more than just for Point Of Sale checkout systems, it also could assist the collector in managing his collection by allowing the user to enter or scan the UPC code and the software would look it up and retrieve the title and issue information and automatically enter it into the user’s collection. Unfortunately, there is no existing comic book UPC database.
Though this may soon be remedied, as there is one new web site that is under development, the Comic Book UPC Database, http://comicbookupcdb.com that looks promising. The developers hope to have a beta up soon.