Friday, Jan 27th, 2012
Show and Tell
posted by Bruce Canwell
Once upon a time I used to keep my comics collection/graphic novel books separate from my prose books. Of course, sometimes the line would blur a bit—where would prose books about comics, like Gerard Jones's exceptional Men of Tomorrow, best be kept? Should something like Gil Kane's Blackmark be shelved with one group of books or the other? I found there were too many times when I was hunting for one specific volume or other, so I lost patience and did a big reorganization project that put all my books in simple alphabetical-by-author order. That means J.G. Ballard is next to James Bama, Paul Chadwick is next to Raymond Chandler, and Jack Kirby is next to Ernie Kovacs (a place neither of those fine men would have expected to occupy!). In the years since I made the switch-over, I've never had a problem finding any book.
In some cases, "author" equates to "imprint." Marvel and DC books are best grouped together…and yes, I decided it was easiest to shelve all Library of American Comics books together. Here's a look at how they look:
The way things are currently grouped together, as you can see, the LOAC titles occupy the lower portion of one shelf and the top end of the neighboring shelf. They're organized by cartoonist within the LOAC grouping: Caniff currently leads the pack, with Blondie (by Chic Young) finishing off the run. (OK, the two "Champagne Edition" books, Polly and Her Pals and Flash Gordon/Jungle Jim Volume 1, are out of sequence—nuthin's perfect! But those books are jumbo-sized, meaning they aren't likely to get lost in the shuffle.)
Some may wonder why Berkeley Breathed doesn't get the pole position in this display, ahead of Caniff; the eagle-eyed among you will notice our five Bloom County volumes are not present here. There's a simple reason for that: they're currently in my office, on my "To Be Read" shelf, because one of my goals is to re-read all of Bloom County during 2012. Once I've gone through the series, Bloom will take its proper place amongst our other books.
That's the view of my LOAC bookshelves, but we'd be curious to see what yours look like, too.
If you send us pictures of your LOAC books—with some explanation of how you organize all your books, if you're so inclined—they may appear in this space in a future installment, and we might have a wee token we can send you as a way of saying thanks.
Now, if you'll pardon me, I have to go clear some space. Gotta make room for Blondie Volume 2, and Steve Canyon Volume 1, and Cartoon Monarch, and…
