League of Comic Geeks Has Found the Answers
On the omnipresent website/app, and how it’s quietly become one of - if not the - biggest comics communities online.
If you like comics and regularly use the internet, you’ve probably heard of League of Comic Geeks. 10 It’s kind of hard to miss. Whether you’re trying to find who wrote that one comic or wanting to download a comic cover, LoCG always seems to be at the top of search results. It’s practically inescapable for comic fans.
But what is it exactly?
That’s a question many have asked themselves, including creators like Kieron Gilen. Back when he first returned to Marvel to write Eternals, he was sorting out how the comic book conversation worked online. He’d heard of LoCG, but he largely viewed it as a place that tracked new releases, almost like a Wiki. He quickly learned it was much more than that.
“It was only then I saw how much chat was going on there,” Gillen said. “I realized that for a discussion of the widest array of direct market comics, it was probably the most intense place of people sharing opinions and talking I could find.”
He’s not wrong. League of Comic Geeks is a robust community of users that constantly discuss and track their comics on the website or app. The enthusiasm is there, but the reason its functionality can be hard to pin down is because it offers a little bit of everything.
It’s a place to track your comic collections. It’s a way to keep your pull list up to date. It’s how many fans rate and review what they read. It’s a research tool, a way to budget your buys, a community. It’s all those things, and it’s more. It’s like a fusion of the gone-but-not-forgotten ComicBookDB, Letterboxd, and Reddit, something that results in a platform that’s become a crucial part of the comic experience for many of its users.
“It really has been a huge factor in my enjoyment of comics,” one told me.
“League of Comic Geeks is absolutely central to comics for me,” another shared.
And the number of people using LoCG is staggering. Per its founder, Jordan Blanco, the site has millions of visitors every month, with over half a million having an account and a monthly average user count that’s into six figures. Everyone may engage with the site a little differently, but their number is legion. That means it isn’t just a platform that does a little bit of everything; it’s one that may quietly be the largest pure comic community online today.
League of Comic Geeks has long been a curiosity to me. It’s always been there, dominating my search results. But at some point, it evolved into an omnipresent figure on the comics internet, and one that seemed like it could be a far bigger deal than anyone was giving it credit for. As I learned, it absolutely is, which is why today, we’ll be exploring how LoCG became an essential gathering place for comic people of all varieties.
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Or “LoCG,” as we’ll largely refer to it as going forward.↩
Horror comics are a favorite of his these days.↩
Absolute Batman unsurprisingly leads the way. Its most recent issue, #12, has nearly 2,700 ratings.↩
Or Ask Me Anythings.↩
The last day shops can change their orders from the distributor.↩
How big is that exactly? Blanco told me, “Based on what I know of the market and my conversations with people, it’s generally the largest (site) of its kind.”↩
Which helps with reading orders for event comics.↩
Random aside: It’s pretty clear that for everyone who wants data about sales and comic consumer engagement, there might not be a better resource right now than LoCG. Its reach of actual comic shop customers seems to tower over the numbers powering the sales charts that currently exist.↩
Which clearly happened recently with Red Hood #1 before that was shut down altogether. Blanco did say its discussion thread will return now that things have calmed a bit.↩
Or “LoCG,” as we’ll largely refer to it as going forward.↩