Comics Reporter today linked to the latest installment of shelf porn over at Robot 6, in which collectors show off their hobby rooms. This time it featured Rod Hendrickson who, as seen in the picture above, has created his own secret hideyhole behind his bookshelves — the ideal way to hide those ungainly long boxes full of comics pamphlets. It’s a great idea and if I had the money and more importantly, the room, I would do the same. Get myself a little library room, make it cozy and hide away all the not so nice books. But I’m afraid I don’t even have a walkin closet to my name and hence the vast majority of my collection is stored at my parents’ house. All I have at home are three narrow Billy bookcases, which together still manage to fit some 600 trade paperbacks and albums in though.
Rooting through the shelf porn archives is illuminating, as it shows how small my collection is — and how much worse S. could’ve had it. But it also shows that collections and graphic novels have largely taken over American comics collections; fifteen or even ten years ago many of the collections featured would’ve lots more floppies on display. I stopped comics collecting in June or July 2000, just fed up with it and back then it was all about buying the monthly issues. When I got back into it seriously this year, it had migrated to the trade paperback or hardcover collection. And there is something to say for seeing a whole row of Marvel Essentials in your bookcase, even if I still have a visceral preference for the humble pamphlet.
Seeing so many collections one after another with all those oversized, overpriced Absolute Editions and DC Archives and Marvel Masterworks and such grouped together in picture after picture, just makes me realise all the more how awful they are. I just don’t like them, they look glitzy and cheap and I’d rather have a cheaper, black and white Essential or Showcase edition every time. Also, if I ever do get my own comics library room, it needs to be more than just cheap bookcases stuffed full with books and loaded up with tsotchkes. It needs to be nice, with good, comfortable chairs, quality bookcases and a room that’s actually finished…