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Collected Editions

How to slim down your comic collection

May 27, 2022 by krisis Leave a Comment

I have too many comics.

If you haven’t seen my collection-moving video, let me set the scene for you: We’re not just talking a bookshelf full of comics. It’s not just a stack of longboxes in closet. I’m talking about a full on library of shelves full of collected editions and accompanying stacks of 100+ shortboxes in my garage of collected editions and floppies.

Image by Mystic Art Design from Pixabay

All told it represents over 30,000 individual issues. That’s why I have an occasional YouTube show called “Shelve, Store, or Sell?” where I work on thinning things out (but mostly wind up moving more things from the stacks to the shelves).

“Too Many Comics” is a relative amount. I have too many comics for me, today, in 2022. Me in 2012 would’ve delighted in this collection! For some people, “enough comics” looks like one shelf on a bookcase, and any overflow must be mercilessly sold. For others, it’s seemingly every comic ever printed.

I fall somewhere in the middle. I started expanding my childhood collection in 2010, before Marvel Unlimited and Marvel’s collection program both really exploded to offer widespread coverage of nearly everything. Mapping every X-Men comic book meant buying hundreds of uncollected issues. If I wanted to create a comic guide for a Marvel character and read all of their appearances along the way, that started with buying.

Would I have made the same decisions in 2020? Oh my goodness, no. Marvel is now systematically working through their back catalog through Masterworks, Epic Collections, and Complete Collections, leaving very few stones unturned. Every issue that winds up in one of those books is also on Marvel Unlimited. For less than the cost of one omnibus a year, you can read all of it, any time you want. DC is slowly moving in the same direction with their DC Universe service (though other publishers now all lag behind thanks to the shuttering of Comixology a few months ago).

Which brings me back to my too many comics. Deciding to slim down your comic collection isn’t easy. Sure, you can Marie Kondo it and “keep only those things that spark joy,” but what does “joy” even mean when it comes to a huge collection of collectibles? You might be happy you own a copy of Uncanny X-Men (1963) #137, but you might not plan on having a meaningful interaction with it once a month, or even once a year.

Image by Mystic Art Design from Pixabay

As I’ve shot the “Shelve, Store, or Sell” series, I’ve settled on my own paradigm for evaluating which of my “too many” comics are “just enough,” and I think it could be helpful for anyone with a too-large comic collection. (It also works for books, movies, music, or any other form of consumable media.

I call it “read, re-read, reference, collect.” The good ol’ 3RC.

What do I own for the purpose of reading it for the first time? Am I ever going to do that?

What do I own for the purposes of re-reading? Have I re-read it already? Will I re-read it again?

What do I own for reference purposes, including books I just enjoy flipping through or lending? How often do I actually touch the book?

What do I have purely for collecting? Why? What do I gain, monetarily or emotionally, from having it in my collection for another year compared to getting rid of it?

Want to understand more about each of these criteria and how I decide if a book qualifies? Keep reading! [Read more…] about How to slim down your comic collection

Filed Under: comic books Tagged With: Collected Editions, OCD Godzilla

Crushing Comics: The Unwrapping – End Credits

March 22, 2018 by krisis

My five-month collected editions unwrapping odyssey (which is really part of a larger eight-month packing to move around the world odyssey) has finally come to a close!

To celebrate the end of this first Crushing Comics video series, I present to you my final bookshelf – or, at least, the process of getting there. Plus, I get to do something I’ve wanted to do my entire life – create a set of scrolling end credits (complete with a soundtrack thanks to Arcati Crisis) to thank everyone who supported me as I created this series!

Filed Under: comic books Tagged With: Arcati Crisis, Collected Editions, Crushing Comics

Crushing Comics S01E085 – Astonishing X-Men by Joss Whedon, John Cassaday, & Laura Martin

March 21, 2018 by krisis

In today’s episode I unwrap my final omnibus, which (as many of you have likely surmised through a process of elimination) is Astonishing X-Men. I use this famously self-contained, blockbuster run as an opportunity to muse on getting back into comics and the surprisingly limited scope of the comic book market.

Want to start from the beginning of this season of videos? Here’s the complete Season 1 playlist of Crushing Comics.

Episode 85 features the Astonishing X-Men Omnibus, covered in the Guide to Astonishing & Amazing X-Men.

(Yes, I skipped posting Episode 84 – it was just a episode prompting folks to guess the final omnibus.)

Filed Under: comic books Tagged With: Astonishing X-Men, Collected Editions, Crushing Comics, John Cassaday, Joss Whedon, Kitty Pryde, Laura Martin, Marvel Comics, Omnibus, X-Men

Crushing Comics S01E083 – X-Statix emerges from X-Force (+ X-Men, Diversity, & Acceptance)

March 14, 2018 by krisis

I’m down to just two books left to unwrap. I know exactly what they are, but not which one is which, so I’m 50% surprised to unwrap the massive X-Statix omnibus.

X-Statix is an indie-style, deconstructionist take on mutantdom that features ongoing themes of addiction, teenage pregnancy, promiscuity, and racial identity/discrimination. I talk a little bit about X-Statix’s story, but spend a lot of the episode discussing diversity and comics. If you reject a (great) comic for having a same sex relationship, then have you been paying attention to the X-Men in the first place?

(You might recall this story from when I originally told it on CK over half a decade ago; it is still one of my favorite posts of all time.)

Want to start from the beginning of this season of videos? Here’s the complete Season 1 playlist of Crushing Comics.

Episode 83 features the X-Statix Omnibus, which is covered in the Guide to X-Force.

Filed Under: comic books Tagged With: Bigotry, Collected Editions, Crushing Comics, homophobia, LGBTQ, Marvel Comics, Omnibus, Peter Milligan, X-Force, X-Statix

Crushing Comics S01E82 – X-Men: Schism, the beginning of the end of the X-Men franchise

March 12, 2018 by krisis

In this episode I finally encounter X-Men: Schism, which marks the beginning of the end of the X-Men franchise for me. It’s accompanied in this comic book bundle but two other horsemen of the X-Men’s apocalypse – X-Sanction and Brian Bendis’s Avengers Assemble.

Are you ready for my unleashed x-fan rage?!

Want to start from the beginning of this season of videos? Here’s the complete Season 1 playlist of Crushing Comics.

Episode 82 features X-Men Schism, Avengers Assemble by Brian Bendis, and X-Sanction.

Filed Under: comic books Tagged With: Avengers, Brian Bendis, Collected Editions, Crushing Comics, Jason Aaron, Schism, X-Men

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