Advanced Query allows field specific queries. It is a somewhat experimental query builder and has known oddities and limitations, see below for more information.
Query Control
Story Fields
Credits
Contents
Indexer Notes
Issue Fields
Ordering
Date Fields
Publisher Fields
Publisher Brand Fields
Indicia / Colophon Publisher Fields
Series Fields
Format Fields
Indexer
Advanced Query is somewhat experimental and has known oddities and limitations
  • All searches match exact substrings. Punctuation is not ignored. "Jack Kirby; Joe Simon" and "Joe Simon; Jack Kirby" are two different searches. This is fundamentally different to how our regular search behaves, which ignores word order, but looks for exact word occurrences (unless a * is given).
  • The default ordering of the query results sorts according to series name and issue date. This ordering is not very useful if you search for publishers, you might want to change it under "Ordering".
  • There is no way to search for multiple values in a field. For instance, while you can search for stories written or penciled by someone, you cannot search for stories penciled by either Jack Kirby or Joe Simon in the text credit fields.
  • Using only linked credits one can search for stories penciled by either Jack Kirby or Joe Simon, or both of them together, no matter in which order they are credited.
  • Searching by date is somewhat tricky. Supported formats include "year.month.day", "year-month-day", "month/day/year", "month-name day, year", "day month-name, year" and just plain year.
  • Date searching for series and stories uses a hidden field that is not always filled out. This is the same field used for sorting by date, which is why sometimes several out-of-sequence results will appear at the beginning of the list. It is also possible to search an issue's cover date as a text field without any conversion to an actual date.
  • Many older indexes do not list the feature characters under characters as well. Therefore the standard search for characters (using the search box on top of the pages) returns matches in either the feature or the characters field. This search behaviour is not supported by the advanced search for technical reasons. You can somewhat simulate it by using the "OR some fields" option.
  • Note that since there is no direct relation between publisher brands and indicia publishers, you cannot use the brand fields while searching for indicia publishers, and you cannot use the indicia publisher fields while searching for publisher brands.