Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be anything better than Calibre at the moment. (Though, I'm happy to be proven wrong!) Nothing against Calibre, it's functionally amazing free software and it works very well; I said "unfortunately" because the interface is extremely dated and clunky and confusing to operate. Once you get it working, it's very nice though. As long as you never have to go fiddling with it again, because every time you've gotta reacquaint with it's weird UI. Still, it really is the best available at the moment, and it's free so that's awesome.

My favorite way to set it up is using the linuxserver image, which has a web-based VNC built into it, so you can remotely run the app on a headless server and then use your browser to interact with it.

I have Calibre configured to monitor a folder for new stuff I throw into it, where it'll automatically fetch metadata and put it into the database. Calibre also has an OPDS server built in, to which I point a nicer frontend for reading comics. Currently that is Kavita which provides a decent web UI for both books and comics.

Anyhow, I believe you could enter data about your physical comics into the Calibre database, and then view the metadata with something like Kavita, though of course you'd be skipping the reading features.

Hell I'd probably just make "comics-list.txt" and just manually list them. Not individually probably, but like

Action Comics - #1 CGC 9.9
Batman (2nd) - 404-407
Beneath The Trees Where Nobody Sees - A (complete), B (complete), ashcan.
Creepshow (1st) - 1D, 2-5A
Creepshow (2nd) - 1-2A, 3C, 4-5A
Creepshow (3rd) - 1A 
Earthworm Jim - #1

Or something to that effect.

I use komga for comic books and manga/manwha. It’s solid and syncs to tablet reader apps as well (I use tachimanga)

Hello, I've no idea what is special about managing a comic collection?

What are the special need?

I know too tools that can be helpful for you though:

• https://bookwyrm.social/ a social book manager and
• https://www.getgrist.com/ a general nocode database

🙂

This program rocks for any sort of organization.

https://obsidian.md/

Markdown files in folders, with all sorts of plugins for tweaking it to your use case.

But beware, Obsidian is full of rabbit holes. Don't get distracted by shiny plugins that you don't actually need.

I use Komga + Komf for digitals but seems like you could do simply with mylar without a download agent. Might need to create a dummy file for each issue you own to change status to owned. Been ages since I have used so not sure.

https://mylarcomics.com/

Hmm could you use something like https://www.kavitareader.com/ and for items just add a single title image of the comic (with real title ect). So it shows up in your list?