Comic Vine Scraper

Apify Actor for scraping the Comic Vine comic book database. Search and extract detailed information about characters, issues, and volumes/series using the Comic Vine API.

Features

• Search by characters, issues, or volumes/series
• Full detail mode extracts creators, powers, teams, story arcs, and more
• Paginated results with configurable limits
• Built-in rate limiting to respect API limits (200 requests/hour)
• Structured JSON output ready for analysis

Requirements

You need a free Comic Vine API key. Get one at comicvine.gamespot.com/api (requires a free GameSpot account).

Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
apiKey	string	required	Your Comic Vine API key
searchQueries	string[]	["Batman"]	Search terms
searchType	string	"character"	Type: character, issue, or volume
maxListings	integer	100	Max results per query (0=unlimited)
scrapeDetails	boolean	true	Fetch full details for each result
proxyConfiguration	object	{}	Proxy settings (optional)

Example Input

{
    "apiKey": "your-api-key-here",
    "searchQueries": ["Batman", "Spider-Man"],
    "searchType": "character",
    "maxListings": 20,
    "scrapeDetails": true
}

Output

Character Output

{
    "type": "character",
    "id": 1699,
    "name": "Batman",
    "realName": "Bruce Wayne",
    "aliases": ["The Dark Knight", "The Caped Crusader"],
    "publisher": "DC Comics",
    "gender": "Male",
    "origin": "Human",
    "powers": ["Genius Level Intellect", "Martial Arts", "Stealth", "Gadgets"],
    "teams": [{"name": "Justice League", "id": 31815}],
    "enemies": [{"name": "Joker", "id": 1702}],
    "creators": [{"name": "Bob Kane", "id": 2643}],
    "firstAppearedInIssue": "Detective Comics #27",
    "issueCount": 15234,
    "description": "Bruce Wayne witnessed the murder of his parents...",
    "imageUrl": "https://comicvine.gamespot.com/a/uploads/...",
    "url": "https://comicvine.gamespot.com/batman/4005-1699/",
    "searchQuery": "Batman",
    "scrapedAt": "2026-04-25T12:00:00.000Z"
}

Issue Output

{
    "type": "issue",
    "id": 110729,
    "name": "The Court of Owls, Part One",
    "issueNumber": "1",
    "volume": "Batman",
    "volumeId": 42721,
    "coverDate": "2011-11-01",
    "writers": ["Scott Snyder"],
    "artists": ["Greg Capullo"],
    "characters": [{"name": "Batman", "id": 1699}],
    "storyArcs": [{"name": "Court of Owls", "id": 55766}],
    "description": "Batman investigates a series of murders...",
    "imageUrl": "https://comicvine.gamespot.com/a/uploads/...",
    "url": "https://comicvine.gamespot.com/batman-1-the-court-of-owls/...",
    "searchQuery": "Batman",
    "scrapedAt": "2026-04-25T12:00:00.000Z"
}

Volume Output

{
    "type": "volume",
    "id": 796,
    "name": "Batman",
    "publisher": "DC Comics",
    "startYear": "1940",
    "issueCount": 713,
    "firstIssue": {"name": "The Legend of the Batman", "issueNumber": "1"},
    "lastIssue": {"name": null, "issueNumber": "713"},
    "description": "The original ongoing Batman series...",
    "imageUrl": "https://comicvine.gamespot.com/a/uploads/...",
    "url": "https://comicvine.gamespot.com/batman/4050-796/",
    "searchQuery": "Batman",
    "scrapedAt": "2026-04-25T12:00:00.000Z"
}

Search Types

Type	Description	Detail Fields
character	Comic book characters	Powers, teams, enemies, creators, origin
issue	Individual comic issues	Writers, artists, characters, story arcs
volume	Series/volumes	Issue list, first/last issue, characters

Rate Limits

The Comic Vine API allows 200 requests per hour. The scraper automatically:

• Adds 1.1s delays between API calls
• Retries on rate limit errors with 10s backoff
• Retries failed requests up to 3 times

For large scrapes (100+ results with details), expect ~2 minutes per 100 results.

How It Works

1. Sends search queries to the Comic Vine API search endpoint
2. Parses paginated search results (up to 100 per page)
3. Optionally fetches full detail pages for each result via the API
4. Extracts and normalizes data into clean JSON structures
5. Pushes results to the Apify dataset

Quick Start

$apify run --purge

Deploy to Apify

apify login
apify push

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Run on Apify

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