Episode 20: Organizing Alphabetically

I would like nothing more than to organize my entire comic book collection into alphabetical order. I crave that organization.

It’s a nice dream, but it would also be a nightmare.

There are plenty of cases where sorting things in strict A-Z order would be more annoying than anything else. And what about the books-with-spines? I’ll never have enough bookshelves for that.

Should we all just give up on the dream of bringing order into the chaos that is our comic book collections? Let’s talk through this….

The Show Script (At Points, I Even Followed It)

As soon as your collection hits a size larger than, say, two dozen, you’ll need to start thinking about how to organize it.  Whether it’s longboxes, shortboxes, or shoeboxes.

Welcome to the HGTV edition of The Pipeline Comics Podcast

Hi, I’m Augie De Blieck Jr., and welcome back to the Pipeline Comics Podcast, looking at European comics from a North American perspective, and a whole lot more.

In episode 18 of this podcast, I talked about the pains of amassing a larger comics collection, how difficult it can be to purge it, and how quickly it takes over any available empty space.

When I first started collecting, I had a few small boxes that I put my comics into.  I think they were either shoe boxes or empty boxes that once held envelopes or paper or something.  My mother worked in a law firm and it was easy enough to get empty boxes from the copy room for all sorts of purposes. 

It was also a great source for paper. They had an oversized printer for bookkeeping purposes that always spit out an extra page or two of 11 x 14 paper every time they printed something out. I drew a LOT on those.

Those boxes I originally sorted by character or creator.  I remember having a Ron Lim box for “Silver Surfer” and “Captain America”, since he was drawing both at the same time at one point.  I had a Spider-Man box. I started with McSpidey and then branched out to others like “Web of” and “Spectacular” and “Marvel Tales.” 

Eventually, I started picking up longboxes. Or maybe short boxes. I’m not even sure anymore.  And, over the years, they accumulated. And then the collection became too large to fit into one room.  

And that’s where the problems start, right?

Once, in my mind, that happens, you have the inevitable descent into organizational chaos.  Because you start organizing, in part, based on what fits in what boxes in what room, and not out of some overall organizational hierarchy.

I also have a special issue as someone who’s written weekly about comics for more than 22 years now. 

I always want the most recent books close by for review or consideration for review, before I’d then file them away where they went.  It’s convenient, it’s a form of organization, and it saves time.

It’s also how some backup systems and podcast hosts work — old, untouched files go into cold storage.  You can still access them, but it might take a little while longer to get to them.

So I’ve always had one or two boxes of seemingly random comics that were ones I either just bought and plan to review, or pulled out for some kind of review.  And those nearly never find their way back to where they “belong.”

The rest of the boxes were organized by theme.

Alphabetical order appeals to my computer science mind.  It makes sense. Even if your collection occupies four different closets and one spare bedroom of your house, you know how to find things.  It’s A – Z by title.

But now you need to file a book in the “N” box but there’s not enough room. You might need to move books between boxes all the way down to “Z”, in theory, to fit that book in with the “N”s.

That also separates books you think of as being together.  And with books rebooting all the time, then you have to keep in mind which “X-Men” #1 comes first in the filing system.  Which “The Flash” #1 is the one you really want? And when a book retitles itself like “New Mutants” to “X-Force”, then they’re FAR apart. Wouldn’t you want all the Liefeld books together?

That’s more like what I have today. A few examples:

• Erik Larsen
• McFarlane Spider-Man/Spawn
• 90s WildStorm (two boxes)
• CrossGen
• Kurt Busiek late 90s Marvel (Thunderbolts/Avengers)
• Magazines 
• Peter David (Hulk, Spider-Man 2099, X-Factor, Young Justice)
• Superman of the early 1990s (triangle books)  – This wouldn’t work in alpha order (Superman, Man of Steel, Adventures of Superman)
  

A lot of those are frozen.  I’ll never need to add anything to them.  I just need to keep track of which closet they’re in.  I label the outside of the boxes, but I still need to look around. And things feel more chaotic. Sometimes, you’ll wind up with a book that belongs in two places.  Where do you put Brian Bendis’ “Young Justice”? With PAD’s “Young Justice”? With the regular DCU books? With the Superboy books? With Bendis’ books? After “Avengers”?!?

Trade paperbacks are just in boxes as they fit. It’s pure chaos, except my bookshelves which have themes.  Let’s not even go there.

I’d like to get to something like alphabetical order. I’d likely have to bring all the boxes into one big room, like my garage, open them all up, and start filing.  It would take all weekend. It would be GLORIOUS! I’d end up with a sore back. I’d lose five pounds from lack of eating and sweating my way through all the lifting and reshuffling of comics.  I’d be happier than a pig in you know what.

I could still have that box or two of loose comics up front that I may have need of for reviewing or researching purposes, but it’s no big deal. Now I’ll know where to file them away for sure when I’m done with them. Just follow the alphabet.

I hope this happens someday.  I really do.