Storage Problems

How do you store your comics? That's the question Mike asked, and subsequently answered himself, but in reading his organizational strategies and looking at some of the responses from other people, I got to thinking about the haphazard way that I have my comics stored.

First, there's a four fold division of comics. A comic can either be a new release, already read, needs to be read, or waiting for completion. Now this might not make a whole lot of sense initially, but let me explain each a little further.

New releases are the new comics I get shipped to me monthly from DCBService. Most new releases I read within the first week or two of getting them. That is, unless they are a part of a mini series or graphic novel. If they are part of a mini series, I store them away until I have the entire mini series to read, at which point the mini series will be put into the "needs to be read" bucket. If it is a graphic novel, it will be put into the "needs to be read" bucket as well, unless I really have a hankering to read it.

Already read comics are, as you guessed it, comics that I have already read. Be it old comics, current comics, graphic novels, or whatnot, whenever I finish reading something it gets stored in the "already read" boxes.

Needs to be read comics are comics that I, well, need to read. These consist of completed runs of back issues, mini series (both current and older), and graphic novels. It is very rare that any comics will be put into the "needs to be read" boxes unless I have completed the back issue series or miniseries. More often than not, things come into the "needs to be read" boxes from the "waiting for completion" boxes once I've finished getting a run together.

The "waiting for completion" boxes are the boxes where I keep back issue runs and mini series that I have some issues of, but not all. These are comics runs that I need to go find missing issues of before I can successfully move them to the "needs to be read" boxes. When I go to comic cons, I focus on completing certain runs from my "waiting for completion" boxes.

Now within each of these four subsets, I generally try to keep things loosely organized by publisher (Marvel, DC, and Indie). I'm not too particular if I don't have them totally organized within the four subsets, but I do freak out if comics get in the wrong subset.

Lastly, I have usually kept graphic novels in with the rest of my comic collection, but I think I want to bring them out and put them on a bookshelf in my new place that I'll be moving into. Since I'll probably have the shelf space, why not display what I like reading?

So there you have it. That's how I keep all of my comics organized. I'm pretty sure there aren't many people out there who will do it the same way as me.