Now I just had to decide what order I wanted things in. I'll tell you the history of the order, and then why I wanted to reorder things some.

Historically, I had ordered things by "category", then by title, then by issue number. Because reordering is hard, the categories I chose 20 years ago mostly stuck. But my collection and life has changed a lot since then. The category move was motivated by getting the titles likely to cross over to be closer to each other. (Before this I had thought about placing storylines together, but this proved impractical. Great if you want to read all of Bloodties. Less great if you just want to read or confirm that you own Avengers #368) Operation: Galactic Storm was a big factor in making an Avengers category, as that arc defined the seven current titles which one might call "Avengers comics". The Clone Saga was a big influence in getting the Spider-Man titles together. Getting Infinity Gauntlet, Silver Surfer and Warlock into one place led to a regrettable category I called "Cosmic". Ultimately the categories were formed from the state of my collection at the time, and the power of inertia.

The categories I had (mostly from the original decision, plus a couple added over the years, like Tick and Crossgen)

• Archie
• Avengers
• Batman
• Marvel Cosmic
• Crossgen
• DC
• DC/Marvel crossovers
• DC vertigo
• Fantastic Four
• GIJoe
• Hulk
• Marvel
• Marvel 2 (the Spider-Girl verse)
• Marvel 2099
• Star Trek
• Star Wars
• Superman
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
• Tick
• Transformers
• Miscellaneous
• Really Miscellaneous
• Duplicates
• Spider-Man
• X-Men

It was a later decision to separate those comics which didn't fit any of the categories (Usagi Yojimbo) from those comics I was confused as to why I owned (Spawn: The Dark Ages), hence the "Really Miscellaneous". Spider-Man and X-Men were separated from the main line-up because I always had a lot of them. In my first apartment in Maryland, all but one rack fit in the guest bedroom, and I put one rack in a walk-in closet. Spider-Man and X-Men together filled about a rack. So it was convenient to have them in a separate place.

I want to change things up. First, my Avengers and Cosmic categories never made any sense, even to me. Less sense now that literally everyone has at some point been an Avenger. The FF and Hulk categories never added much. So I would like one big Marvel Universe category, perhaps separating out other things published by Marvel, but still leaving Spidey and the X-Men off to the side.

And then I want to maximize ease of access. The collection will be in 5 racks across 2 rooms, "the comic room" and "the office". The racks fit 25 boxes each. The top shelf is the hardest to reach, so I would like to put boxes I intend to access less there. I would like the collection to be in smaller sections that can grow within themselves. It is obnoxious when adding some Batman comics leads to a chain effect that shuffles the X-Men boxes.

I began by counting how many boxes I had of each type.



Hey, 22 DC boxes. That's perfect. DC will get its own rack with room to grow! 7 boxes of Batman, 3 boxes of Superman, 2 Vertigo, and 10 DC? Great. Top 2 shelves for general DC, then 2 shelves for Batman, and the bottom shelf (really, the floor) for Superman and Vertigo.

Turns out I'm terrible at math. There were 26.5 DC boxes, 10.5 general DC, 4 Superman, 2.5 Vertigo, and 9.5 Batman boxes. No room to grow. Rack full with most of the Vertigo being placed awkwardly on the next rack.



But this isn't so bad. The next rack will be miscellaneous comics, allowing the "comic room" to actually just be the "Marvel comic room".



Made some decisions. I would break up my Marvel 2 selection. Spider-Man is very important to me. I spend a lot of time reading and recording thoughts on Spider-Man comics, so I would like everything I consider a Spider-Man comic together, and that clearly includes Spider-Girl. But then I looked at my Spider-Man section and it had comics about two different Spider-Girl's, as well as Arana, and one Spider-Woman. The two previous Spider-Women had felt less like Spider-Man characters, so were elsewhere. But that was confusing. So I also moved all Spider-Woman comics to the section. It did not occur to me at the time to also move Spider-Man 2099, and now it's late. I may do that one day. But for now, I have a rack with 4 shelves that almost fit Spider-Man and X-Men.



It is a half box off. So a small box with X-Men comics is awkwardly on the top shelf. 10 Spider-Man boxes, 10.5 X-Men boxes. No room to grow. Not sure where I'd put the Spidey 2099 comics. I don't intend to buy very many more Spider-Man comics. Anything newer than 2007 I get in trades. A few issues of Spider-Man Adventures and Spidey Super Stories, plus various promotional tie-ins, like "Spider-Man reads the Washington Post" are all I'm really missing. I have two omnibi collecting the first 67 issues of Amazing Spider-Man, and the issues thereafter until 2007, when I switched to trades. I do occasionally nab older issues of Spidey if I see them cheaply.

A bit of a side note. I'm getting sentimental coming across the more beat-up comics. Many of them tell more of a story than the pristine ones. A lot are my earliest comics, frequently Avengers comics. And then these Bendis Daredevils...



I once flipped over a car while driving. It was 4 am, I'd been on the road 5 hours (a bad idea to begin with), got startled by a small animal, oversteered, lost control, rolled across 4 lanes of freeway and a median to land rightside up on the far opposite shoulder. Tow truck thought I was driving in the other direction from what I had been. Both tow truck and highway patrol commented that based on the shape of the car, they'd assumed I'd be dead. Scattered across the freeway was a lot of stuff. My jacket was the first thing I saw. Then a half-bottle of Talisker (I hadn't been drinking; it fell out of my trunk with everything else, but I put it away before the cops came just in case). And these Bendis Daredevil comics I'd decided to read from beginning to end. The patrolman was very gracious in picking up all my comics for me, from all over the freeway. Broke up with a girlfriend that weekend too. Heck of a weekend. And the memories often lie not so much in the comics, but in the damage.

Along the same lines, but on a more positive note, here is the first comic I ever bought. Off a stand at Walgreens more than 25 years ago. Avengers #309. Not sure any story has affected the course of my life as much as this one.

Great ramble! Sometimes I think I've put more time into organizing and re-organizing my comics than actually reading them.

I'll come back and post more later; back to Godzilla vs King Kong.

I get what you're saying about categories, Coke... I do that a bit. I mostly have my long boxes alphabetical by title... but only mostly. For example, all the Superman Titles are under 'S', Batman is under 'B', West Coast Avengers is under 'A', etc.

Also, I'll skip around a bit to accomodate titles I have alot of. For example, I have about a box and a half worth of Iron Man, so the box before goes past 'I', so that Iron Man can have a whole box.

Incidently, where'd you get those metal shelves you have your boxes on? Mine are stacked on top of each other (Far from ideal).

We have shelves like that at Lowe's (where I work) but I'm sure you can get them at any home goods kind of store as well. I have some of them myself and they work really well, and not just for comics I have one in the kitchen too for my girl friend's cooking gadgets and one in the bathroom closet for towels and extra soaps and stuff.

I use a mix of Coke's method as well as using large filing cabinets that I keep mostly in a spare closet in the hall of my apartment which work pretty good for me space wise.