Board Thread:Policies/@comment-3361105-20170223213832

We've noticed a few people making the mistake of adding the wrong date to comic pages. This is all covered on the Comic Template Help page, but just so that everyone knows, let me explain:

'The comic template uses the cover date'' for its month and year fields. You don't have to think hard about it. If it says Feb. 2017 on the cover, put "February" in the month field, and 2017 in the Year field. Do not put the publication month and year in those fields.'''

The day field, however, does use the publication date.

Confused?

The date on the cover of a comic is not the same as the date the book comes out in stores.

The comic industry treats their publications the same way that the magazine industry does. While we might typically call the date on the cover of a comic the "cover date", the correct term is "pull date".

The reason it's called the "pull date" is because the date on the cover is actually the date that retailers are supposed to remove the book from their shelves to make way for new issues. For DC, this has typically been a two-month difference. A book that hits shelves in March is removed from shelves in May, even though it says "May" on the cover.

For simplicity's sake, the month and year field use the dates you can see on the cover.

Perhaps some confusion comes from the Day field, which does use the date of publication. This was a later addition to the template, which helps categorize comics by the week of publication.

The template automatically knows which month and year to categorize with by performing math-miracles on the cover date that's already input.

They are two separate functions, even though one relies on the other.

'''So, once again, just to be clear:
 * Use the date on the cover for the "Month" and "Year" fields.
 * Use the date of the actual release for the "Day" field.'''

For our purposes, it is far more important that you fill out the Month and Year fields correctly, so if you're still confused, just ignore the Day field, and let someone else handle it. 