I have been helping my son load metadata on comic books using the ComicVine Calibre plugin. I had to learn the information below the hard way and after much trial & error. The following information assumes you have a comicvine login and API key.
To ensure the Comicvine Calibre Plugin downloads covers (found this solution in an obscure reference in a MobileRead forum):
1. Copy comicvine.zip plugin to a temp folder & extract the contents of the zip file
2. Edit source.py
Find the line url = 'http://static.comicvine.com' + url and comment the line
# url = 'http://static.comicvine.com' + url
4. Save source.py and rezip all the files.
5. Install the comicvine plugin into Calibre.
6. Covers are now downloaded with the comic metadata.
First thing to do:
1. If you don't already have a login, create a user account on
https://comicvine.gamespot.com/. This is required to get an API key.
2. Customize Plugin (Preference/Plugins/Search for Comicvine Plugin/Customize)
3. input your unique API Key
4. Change worker threads to 1 (This is important to prevent running into API limits too quickly)
Next on the list: Create an "Update ComicVine IDs" Search and Replace template
1. Search Mode: Regular Expression
2. Search Field: identifiers
3. Identifier type: comicvine-volume
4. Search for: .*
5. Replace with: nnnn where nnnnn=any five digit number for now
6. Destination field: identifiers
7. Identifier type: comicvine-volume
8. Case sensitive (uncheck)
9. Mode: Replace field
Now click on the SAVE button & Save template as "Update ComicVine IDs"
The comicvine plugin has a problem with comics that were published with different series/volumes/etc. For example Deadman came out with issues under Volume 1, Volume 2, etc. The plugin doesn't match the comic books too well under those circumstances.
The instruction below should be used if you are downloading metadata for a large number of issues in a given volume.
Each comic gets a comicvine-volume and individual comicvine number. If you provide only the comicvine-volume number in the bulk change to all the issues in a given volume, it almost ensures 100% accuracy on the metadata download. If you are only dealing with a single issue, then you should get the comicvine-volume and comicvine issue number & edit the single issue, placing the 2 numbers (example: comicvine:57420, comicvine-volume:3370) in the ids field prior to metadata download.
What to do when you are not getting a good matches on comics with a bulk metadata download?
Login to comicvine website.
Search for the Comic you want to retrieve metadata on
For Example Armor Wars:
https://comicvine.gamespot.com/ultim...rs/4050-28008/ is the high-level URL that shows 4 issues.
I then highlight the 4 issues in Calibre, do "Edit Metadata in Bulk", go to search/replace and load my Template. Change the Replace with: from my template default to Replace with: 28008 (the comicvine-volume number for this set of issues) and then click OK.
Now the Comicvine Plugin will get the metadata for the correct comics.
I hope this helps those of you doing comic book metadata downloads into Calibre.