Marvel Comics opens up its metadata for amazing Spider-Apps by Alex Dalenberg.
From the post:
It’s not as cool as inheriting superpowers from a radioactive spider, but thanks to Marvel Entertainment’s new API, you can now build Marvel Comics apps to your heart’s content.
That is, as long as you’re not making any money off of them. Nevertheless, it’s a comic geek’s dream. The Disney-owned company is opening up the data trove from its 75-year publishing history, including cover art, characters and comic book crossover events, for developers to tinker with.
That’s metadata for more than 30,000 comics and 7,000 series.
I know, another one of those non-commercial use licenses. I mean, Marvel paid for all of this content and then has the gall to not just give it away for free. What is the world coming to?
😉
Personally I think Marvel has the right to allow as much or as little access to their data as they please. If you come up with a way to make money using this content, ask Marvel for commercial permissions. I deeply suspect they will be more than happy to accommodate any reasonable request.
The comic book zealot uses are obvious but aren’t you curious about the comic books your parents read? Or that your grandparents read?
Speaking of contemporary history, a couple of other cultural goldmines, Playboy Cover to Cover Hard Drive – Every Issue From 1953 to 2010 and Rolling Stone.
I don’t own either one so I don’t know how hard it would be to get the content in to machine readable format.
Still, both would be a welcome contrast to main stream news sources.
I first saw this in a tweet by Bob DuCharme.