Cover dates

[rouhannb]

I’m not sure how widespread this is, but some publishers of US comics have two publishing dates: the date the issue was released, and a cover date, which is typically a couple months ahead, and also fuzzy. ComicVine distinguishes the two as “In Store Date” and “Cover Date” respectively.

For example, Wonder Woman #761 was released on August 25, but has a cover date of October.

It might be useful to distinguish the two, at the very least to prevent confusion for people writing scrapers or manually writing metadata.

[gotson]

That's interesting, thanks for pointing it out.

[gotson]

Could you clarify whether this cover date actually means the date on which the cover was released? I know on Image Comics website for instance you can see the future issues to be released, and usually the cover is already there.

[jeremydouglass]

I believe that "cover date" refers to the date information literally printed upon the cover in ink, usually just Mon / Year. Publication date is traditional cataloging information.

Here is an example discussion of the difference at dc.fandom:

https://dc.fandom.com/f/p/2951064579997697606#:~:text=The%20date%20on%20the%20cover,term%20is%20%22pull%20date%22.