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Underground > Comic Books >

I've got issues... and they're as mint as the day I bought them

Mister Six, whom all the girls

12:38 / 04.05.05

I'm not sure about you guys, but I'm surrounded by comics. At a party of cartoionists recently i made the joke of being in bed reading some issues when it suddenly struck me that I was cornered by dogeared comic books, stacked in the corner on top of a box of them, splayed on the comforter in from of me and neatly shoved into a bookcase by the bed for easy access.

What had I done? I asked them, laughing. None of them laughed.

I buy comics weekly, a few auctions every couple of months and at least one-three conventions a year.

... so what am I trying to accomplish? A library of comics??

Anyone else out there in this situation?

12:49 / 04.05.05

Funny you should post this, I've been thinking about the size of my collection recently. I've got about 25 boxes of about 400 comics each (the long boxes), and I too buy comics weekly. Most of the boxes are at my parents' house in the basement, I've got about 5 boxes in my apartment, plus about 100 paperbacks/hardcovers kept at both my apt. and my parents' house. (All my comics are bagged, but not the paperbacks, of course.)

I used to think "I'll never sell my comics! They're gold to me!" and it's not about their financial value, just that I love them. I used to think "I'll keep them all until I die and then I'll will them to someone I know who loves and appreciates them as much as I do." But how would someone go through almost 10,000 comic books even if they did receive them after my death? And now I begin to wonder about e-bay and maybe I should sell about 1/3 of them off soon, the comics that I don't really care all that dramatically about anymore. When I get a house someday, I know lots of room will be taken up for storage alone. Can't keep them in the 'rents house forever.

Maybe I could just get graphic novel/paperback collections of a lot of the comics I have and then sell the originals, so this way I can still actually read the stories and have them.

I imagine many comics fans are wondering about similar things... I hear David Goyer recently sold his entire comic book collection on e-bay. Kevin Smith sold his collection to pay for CLERKS and then bought back practically all the stuff he sold when he made his millions and bought his own comic book store. I see fans like me posting on message boards saying "I'm selling off about half my collection, I'm 30 and it's time to clean house" very often these days...

12:54 / 04.05.05

A library of comics is, i think, exactly the problem. Comics aren't really found in libraries (I believe the Beano and the Dandy might be among the stacks at the British Library). Comics are in a similar situation to books in the late 18th century - If you wanted to read them you really have to buy them - private collections are the only places where comics survive...

Even the comparatively recent phenomenon of the graphic novel doesn't really help - yes they are found in libraries but not all comics are collected a problem most prevelent with comics that are not popular with private collectors...

Mister Six, whom all the girls

13:18 / 04.05.05

Could we start a comic book library??

13:19 / 04.05.05

Have you got facilities?

Mister Six, whom all the girls

13:36 / 04.05.05

Nah, I'm an atheist at home.

But I've been thinking, being a cultural org, wouldn't I be eligible for funding from somewhere? Then it's just a matter of letting people into a 'reading room.'

yawn - thing's buddy

13:49 / 04.05.05

are you sure you want obsessives (for it is only obsesssives who would actually go to a private comic library) to come into your house and stay there for hours on end, reading yer coms?

actually, this concept has the makings of a great sit-com pilot show that will never get commisioned.

i recently brought all my 2 thauze up to ma glasgow pad (from my mum and dads) - progs 1- 700 (!) - and now they are getting in the way.

too difficult to store effectively, but perhaps the most abundantly resourced of all my story-mines: therefore, difficult to bin.

some great material.

related guff:

milligan's obsessed with writing gay love stories inny?

tribal memories is well poofy.

(progs 585-588 art by RIOT)

freakwave is poofy
enigma is poofy
bad company is poofy (kinda)
rogan gosh is poofy

is milligan poofy, anyone know?

man i miss x-statix!

22:50 / 04.05.05

Comic book librarianship would be positively Sisyphean. Depends on how "deeply" you want to catalog. A cataloging system would be pretty easy to figure out, a database would be pretty easy to make. It would just take a million years. Especially with the dog-eared ones. Or the ones that weren't in plastic bags.

I guess what I've learned through the little bit of time I spent trying to get a library science degree is that there are some things worth keeping, and some things worth chucking. But, since you are the curator of this "library", you're the ruler. You get to choose what stays, and what goes.

Why, yes, I've worked in comic shops before; why do you ask?

Good luck with it.

23:13 / 04.05.05

I considered starting up a minicomics and zines library at one point, and spoke to the Big Library in Melbourne about it, and there's all these issues that you don't initially consider to - well, to consider. Having books on a shelf is all well and good, but paper deteriorates and stuff like that over time. Temperature regulation, all that kind of thing. Not exactly the kind of thing you can just set up at home.

What the librarians I spoke to suggested was that I got active about making sure that the minicomics and zines I thought were worth preserving got donated to them, where they could look after them. So that's what I've been doing - sending off one of everything I publish meself to the national library of australia and the state library of victoria. And I've been encouraging all minicomickers and ziners to do the same with their gear.

Maybe, if you wanna preserve the comics, you donate them to your local library? Of course, check with them first before sending them umpteen longboxes in the post...

Is there such a thing as legal deposit in the UK and the US?

I regularly cull my collection to make the buying of new bookshelves less necessary, but I suspect I don't buy as much as you guys. I've also got two boxes of stuff "for the grandkids" so to speak - my Uncle Ken had boxes and boxes of the stuff going back to when he was a teen, and one of my favourite memories is going to his place and being allowed to rummage through boxes and boxes and take some home with me. I want to give that joy to the next generation.

Sometimes, as part of the cull, I do a random handing-out of comics thing. Pick some random addresses from the white pages and post them out anonymously. Or go wandering the streets at night, stuffing mailboxes. Once I dumped a whole bunch of comics at an op shop, hoping that they'd price them at about 50c each and some wee kiddy would have a field day picking out ones he wanted, but I suspect the people who ran the shop got wise and sold the lot for big cash to a comic shop - I went in a week after donating and they were nowhere to be found in the store. Doesn't matter really - the charity got the money, but the kids didn't get the comics.

m.

23:43 / 04.05.05

My "childhood" collection resides in the garage of my parents. As they live in Arizona I almost worry about the plastic melting onto the covers. The stash that I've had since I've lived in California has indeed grown. Maybe a dozen short boxes and various piles of "current" issues stashed here & there.

I'm also on the weekly drip for my comics fix.

Thankfully my girlfriend has a hyper cousin that is 7 years old and loves it when I hand him a stack of comics that just didn't make the cut. It's gotten so he'll ask for 'em which is fine by me. Make's it easy to just pass along a stack of comics every so often.

I've also stuffed the occasional "return box" of the local library with comics. They may well have thrown 'em out but perhaps not.

As for the one's in Az. I'll retreave them when I've got my own house. until then I'll joke that they are part of the down payment for my first house... doubtful really considering how I treated them in my youth.

Mister Six, whom all the girls

00:58 / 05.05.05

I've donated my share to the local library, such as an extra copy of Kingdom Come. I stopped by recently and saw Batman Knightfall Part II. I'd never read it so, bored, I flipped through... Ugh. I still feel my bile rise when I think of those muscular shoulders and strange long tails of hair whipping about... under hastily drawn Mignola covers. I also give comics away to people all the time.

Nothing says love like a random issue of Kamandi, after all.

I stopped collecting in 1991 after I sold my entire collection, Started up again with Vertigo and then in 98 found the Marvel 60's... it's been downhill ever since. What started as an exercise to buy really great Marvel 60's comics and intelligent indy comics spiralled into a spandex whirlwind of insanity clad in mylar.

I've been emotionally buying stuff recently and it's getting strange. Why do I WANT to read the 80's JLA or All Star Squadron??? Christ... I have a degree I swear. And now I've got these long boxes full of comics from the 60's (Marvel and Wally wood's THUNDER Agents), 70's (Marvel reprints, Defender, the terrible Captain Marvel series...), so many Kirby and Ditko comics my hips have outgrown my pants and recent stuff that I want to keep.

But if I'm not creating a 'library'... what the fuck am I doing??

07:36 / 05.05.05

Oh I wasn't advocating private collections open to the public as such - I was just pointing out the lack of public collections and that almost all comic collections are in private hands in the manner of books in 18th century...

Dennis Gifford was a comics writer par excellence - he had every significant comic from the late 19th century onwards. Everytrhing, Batman, Superman, Beano, Ally Sloper's Half Holiday. It was all there. When he died, he left no will and his collection was broken up and sold to the highest bidder at auction. A real shame...

Which again brings me to believe that there needs to be some kind of international comics archive... and I guess there is... in France - the recipient of all the file copies of Marvel comics back catalogue...

18:13 / 05.05.05

there needs to be some kind of international comics archive

and there is one, in digital comics preservation. comprehensive lists go round of what's left to scan.

i have 2000AD #1-600 in digital format. all of cerebus. every single vertigo issue. and on and on. i'm not proud of it, but i have them all, and as these aren't private collections, i'm far from unique in this.

its amazing that comics publishers are even further behind the music industry when it comes to realising the digital realm. not so the archivists.