
The Marvel API - gavreh
https://developer.marvel.com/
======
JakeWesorick
The following default rules apply to all Apps:

Advertising. No advertising or sponsorship of any kind may appear on or be
associated with any App (unless included in the Content made available by
Marvel).

No Charge. All Apps must be offered free of charge to download or otherwise
access and may not contain any in-App purchase features or any other method of
monetization, unless approved in writing by Marvel pursuant to a separate
written agreement as described below.

If you are interested in creating an App that is paid and/or contains
monetization features, please contact us at Marvel-api-help@marvel.com to
discuss a potential business relationship. All for-profit Apps must be pre-
approved in writing by Marvel (such approval to be granted or withheld in
Marvel's sole discretion). To the extent any for-profit Apps are approved in
writing by Marvel (in its sole discretion), you will be solely responsible for
any and all taxes due in connection with the distribution of such App in any
territory.

~~~
98codes
It's a great go-to for an API that provides relatable, recognizable data for a
demo, class, or darn near anything else you build that doesn't need selling.

~~~
projectramo
You think its okay to use WOLVERINE himself in any old demo?

~~~
KingMob
He's the best there is, at what he does, which is illustrating REST APIs.

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shaunpersad
I love finding obscure APIs. Here's the Campbells Soup one:
[https://developer.campbellskitchen.com/](https://developer.campbellskitchen.com/)

~~~
alexknowshtml
Cool find - storytime!

Back in 2005ish, I worked for the digital agency that built and managed all of
Campbells Kitchen's online properties, including the Campbells Kitchen recipe
database. It might seem trivial now, but at the time it was at least a few
years of its time in terms of using the power of databased driven webapps.

I also personally built the first ever CSS-based layout site for Campbells -
it was the marketing site for V8 Juice. Up until that point, everything was
still built with tables holding sliced images.

At the same time, the internal computers at Campbells corporate offices ran
IE5.5, which had terrible CSS support.

So I literally built two versions of the site - one that would pass muster on
their outdated internal computers, and another would drag them into the era of
modern layouts and accessibility.

I learned SO MUCH working on those sites.

It looks like the current CK website has been turned into a Wordpress site so
I assumed my original work is long gone, but it's very cool to see the legacy
of Campbells Kitchen database I worked on kicking as an API.

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ImJasonH
I made a Go client for this a few years ago, not sure if it still works:
[https://github.com/imjasonh/go-marvel](https://github.com/imjasonh/go-marvel)

I used it to make a gif of Uncanny X-Men covers throughout time:
[http://www.imjasonh.com/dump/2258.gif](http://www.imjasonh.com/dump/2258.gif)

~~~
christiangenco
Oh wow - seeing that much history and human effort zip by so quickly is
enthralling. I want more!

~~~
ImJasonH
Here ya go:

\- Amazing Spider-Man:
[http://www.imjasonh.com/dump/1987.gif](http://www.imjasonh.com/dump/1987.gif)

\- Fantastic Four:
[http://www.imjasonh.com/dump/2121.gif](http://www.imjasonh.com/dump/2121.gif)

~~~
Cyph0n
Cool stuff! It's also interesting to see the price increasing gradually over
time.

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ceautery
A few years ago I built a toy app for the Marvel API as a code challenge for a
consulting job:
[https://github.com/ceautery/sixDegreesOfSpidey](https://github.com/ceautery/sixDegreesOfSpidey)

It's cute, but needs updated for a security vulnerability in jQuery, and I
need to dig in and see why the mocha test for Absorbing Man got borked...
although y'all are welcome to submit PRs if you're still looking for
Hacktoberfest credits.

The README contains some of the oddities I found in the API, like some search
types are more reliable than others, everyone eventually teams up with Iron
Man or Wolvie, and the data is pretty incomplete (which makes sense if you
have 79 years worth of data to compile from printed media).

* EDIT * - I've done the cardinal sin of leaving my API keys in the project. Marvel doesn't currently give you a way to generate new keys (that I could find), so enjoy while you can, but you should probably sign up your own account once my keys start hitting their API limit.

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amyjess
That reminds me of a project I've always wanted to do but keep putting on the
backburner: for a while now, I've been wanting to scrape the Unofficial
Handbook of Marvel Comics Creators (UHBMCC) [0] and turn it into an actual
database that I can run arbitrary queries on instead of just a collection of
flat files (it's a very well-put-together collection of flat files, though).
Fortunately they provide an offline version (in the form of CAB files of all
things!) so I'd be able to do everything without hammering their server.

IMO, when it comes to Marvel comics, they're a much more useful resource than
even the GCD (and part of this is their UI: it may be dated, but putting all
the information for a series on one page is ten times better than the GCD's
issue-by-issue interface).

(so, several years ago I did do some scraping of a very old version of the
UHBMCC, but it's really outdated, I used some awful scraping tools, and I just
stored everything in pickled Python objects rather than a database... if I
were to start the project up again, I'd want to do it right from the start)

[0] [http://maelmill-insi.de/UHBMCC/](http://maelmill-insi.de/UHBMCC/)

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i_am_nomad
It’s a little unsettling that the character they chose for the API’s splash
page is Ultron.

~~~
vl
Thanos would be way better. Thanos did nothing wrong!

~~~
projectramo
Wrong: he had infinite power to do anything he wants so instead of doubling
the food supply in the universe (duh!) he halves the population? Come on!

~~~
x220
Or he could modify the reproduction rate of sentient species so the problem
doesn't come back in 1-5 generations

~~~
i_am_nomad
Or he could alter his own brain so as to no longer care about overpopulation.
For that, though, he doesn’t need the reality gem, he just needs the whiskey
stone.

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dang
Discussed in 2014:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7648860](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7648860)

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mroll
I wish I could see the API docs w/out signing up. Like what endpoints are
available, etc.

~~~
jhinra
The Test Calls page
([https://developer.marvel.com/docs](https://developer.marvel.com/docs)) shows
a list of end points.

~~~
amyjess
Is that Swagger? It looks like it.

~~~
thebouv
Yep, you can see swagger and swagger-ui keywords all through the source of
that docs page.

~~~
Meic
In fact, they're still using Swagger 1.0[0] from 2011 which wasn't even
formally specified, and currently-available copies of the spec[1] had to be
unearthed from the wayback machine.

[0]
[https://gateway.marvel.com/docs/public](https://gateway.marvel.com/docs/public)
[1]
[https://github.com/Mermade/swagger1/blob/master/versions/1.0...](https://github.com/Mermade/swagger1/blob/master/versions/1.0.md#swagger-
specification)

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jressey
I was in until they asked me to join their stupid rewards program to get an
API key.

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weej
A colleague of mine created graph visualization of the entire Marvel ecosystem
(content creators) several years back when the marvel API launched: Blog Post:
[http://allthingsgraphed.com/2015/04/09/a-matter-of-
degrees/](http://allthingsgraphed.com/2015/04/09/a-matter-of-degrees/)

Direct Link to generated SVG:
[http://allthingsgraphed.com/public/images/marvel/avengers.sv...](http://allthingsgraphed.com/public/images/marvel/avengers.svg)

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caseysoftware
I did a writeup and launched a simple SDK around this back in 2014 when it
launched: [https://caseysoftware.com/blog/marvel-api-helper-
library](https://caseysoftware.com/blog/marvel-api-helper-library)

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stevewillows
Here's a fun list of JSON APIs -- [https://github.com/toddmotto/public-
apis](https://github.com/toddmotto/public-apis)

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thedangler
I can't seem to get back Image result for a character. I want a way to see all
the different art for one character. Anyone manage to get back multiple Image
results for a character?

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xg15
This would have been a perfect use-case for an RDF store. But of course, the
world has moved into different directions, so we get a rate-limited web-api
instead.

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kaycebasques
What do you all think of their documentation? I don't have a specific reason
for asking, other than that I'm a technical writer and this is a good
opportunity to "pick your brains" [1] as they say...

[1] Weird phrase...

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rkuykendall-com
Python 3 wrapper I wrote:
[https://pypi.org/project/marvelous/](https://pypi.org/project/marvelous/)

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muhneesh
A cool use case would be if they open sourced their designs for use in
prototypes - it would be super compelling to pitch an app with Iron Man or
Captain America as the central user.

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euparkeria
It would be interesting feed an AI to generate new heroes names and
biographies.

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bane
I wonder how this compares to the info in comicvine?

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chocks
this is pretty cool. look like its built with swagger-ui, so we can play
around with the endpoints a little bit.

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hammerbrostime
Somebody get Scott McCloud for comment

