Mark van den Anker
Web development, content manager comic database
Comics, DVDs and CDs
I got a cool comic, DVD and CD collection. It's not really a huge collection, it's just a nice collection. It's not an obsession for me, it's just cool and I'm proud of what I own.I started reading comics when I was really young. But when I was younger it was all about European albums. I started reading (translated) Marvel Comics when I was like 12 years old. It all started with the X-Men animated television series. I loved these X characters. Eventually I started reading loads of X comics: X-Men, Uncanny, X-Force, Generation X, Wolverine, etc... I'm familiar with all Marvel characters, all super-heroes and villains. I got some really good DC stuff as well, but Marvel is really my thing.
I like western movies, so I own The Good, The Bad & The Ugly and Once Upon A Time In The West. I like mafia movies, so I own the Godfather movies and Goodfellas. I like Tarantino, Kubrick and Coppola, so I own Pulp Fiction, the Kill Bill saga, 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Shining, Apocalypse Now, etc. And a lot more great thriller, action, mafia, adventure and sci-fi movies!
I love hiphop. I started listening to American hiphop ten years ago. I got a great Wu-Tang Clan, Wu solo projects and Wu affiliates CD collection and besides that I own CDs from a lot more hiphop artists, mostly from New York: Mobb Deep, Nas, etc... I'm also really into Dutch hiphop. Specially Opgezwolle and The Opposites. Too bad at the Collectorz.com office everybody hates hiphop, but hey, it's what it is.
At Collectorz.com
When I almost finished my Media and Information Bachelor study I started working at Collectorz.com. My sister told me about an ad in a magazine of a company that was looking for somebody who could manage a comic database. So, a few comic geeks and I replied to the Collectorz.com ad. And since I'm the most 'normal' comic dude in the universe I was the one who had to do the job: create a online comic db for our existing and new Comic Collector users! A few die-hard Comic Collector users submitted their personal databases and it was my job to merge these databases into one single database: the basic version of the online db. It took three months (but I wasn't working full-time) to merge and clean up all comic data and finally (I think it was July 2006) the online comic db was born. And nowadays I'm still updating the online comic db. We got almost 170,000 comics in our online db and I'm proud of this impressive db I managed from scratch. At our Comic Collector Connect website we got a comic update section and a nice blog I take care of.In the meantime I finished my study and became a so-called Bachelor of Arts. I decided to stick with Collectorz.com since I really like working over here. I asked Alwin (the boss a/k/a the man in charge) if it was possible to do something extra for Collectorz.com and this resulted in web development. Working on webpage lay-outs, editing HTML and CSS codes, creating screenshots, etc... I'm doing stuff like setting up these 'about' pages, setting up Collectorz.nl, taking care of the Connect blog in general, helping creating templates for all the Collectorz.com products, etc... It's all website work combined with comic data work. Since I studied for working as an editor for a magazine or newspaper, I never thought I would end up working for a website as developer, content manager and comic data dude. But it is what it is, and I like what I'm doing!
