Bookcases: Comics

The worst part of being a comic book fan is how expensive the hobby is. You can't rely on libraries to feed your addiction, so you have to buy anything you want to read. And comics aren't cheap. Sigh. Anyway, here are my comics.

Bookcase no. 1

Conan (the Marvel years), Conan (the Dark Horse years), and Conan (the magazine years). I likes me some Conan. Boneyard's good too.

Terry Moore's Strangers in Paradise is a great series; it's the one I lend to gals who claim they "don't like comics." Ditto Robinson's Box Office Poison and Thompson's Blankets. I guess you could call this the Chick Lit shelf, except for the presence of Guido Crepax there on the end.

The first six volumes of Dave Sim's Cerebus series get my highest recommendation. The last ten volumes get my highest "No! Don't read it!" recommendation. Just read the first six, and make up your own ending. Trust me, you'll be a lot happier that way.

EC reprints, Creepy reprints, and Hellboy. This is the shelf for the horror fan. What the hell's that Love & Rockets sketchbook doing there?

George Herriman's Krazy Kat is a comic strip masterpiece, as is Winsor McCay's Little Nemo in Slumberland. One could argue that Alejandro Jodorowsky's and Moebius's The Incal is also a masterpiece. I'm certainly a fan. But then I clearly have a thing for Jodorowsky, as evidenced by this shelf.

Bookcase no. 2

Tiny masterpieces populate this shelf. Chester Brown's Ed the Happy Clown is one of the greatest comic books I've ever read. Seth's It's a Good Life if You Don't Weaken is also very good. Ditto Joshua Cotter's Skyscrapers of the Midwest, Jason Lutes's Jar of Fools, Jim Woodring's The Portable Frank, and Guy DeLisle's Pyongyang.

The only thing uniting this shelf is the size of the books that are on it. I can't explain its order in any other way.

Adam Warren's Empowered started off as a joke, and ended up as a deeply moving superhero saga. A totally unexpected turn of events! Also, I wish MOME were still around.

Anthologies!

Love & Rockets and Xenozoic Tales: two of the greatest comics of the '80s. (Though L&R is, of course, a whole lot better--if only because it's one of the best of all time. But, ooh, that Mark Schultz sure knows how to draw!)

The adults-only shelf is, oddly enough, on the bottom shelf. I guess that's because there are only adults in the house.

Bookcase no. 3

Scott McCloud, Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, McKinnon/Wiley, Chadwick, Wagner, Miller. I wouldn't be who I am without this shelf. (If you're wondering where Watchmen and The Sandman are, look 14-15 shelves down.)

More classics. Huizenga, Tomine, Clowes, Chadwick (again), Pekar, Gonick, Lutes (again), Sacco, Pope, and Eisner.

Some standouts on this shelf: Joe Matt's Peep Show, Kyle Baker's Why I Hate Saturn, Richard Sala's The Chuckling Whatsit, and the Kramers Ergot anthologies.

The most important books on this shelf are Frank Miller's Daredevil, Walt Simonson's Thor, and Peter David's Hulk.

Ware, Manara, Azpiri, Crumb, and, with their spines turned away, Al Capp's Li'l Abner.

Bookcase no. 4

Peanuts, natch. The comic strip I grew up with. I'm so close to it I'm not even sure if I could effectively articulate what makes it so great.

More minor masterpieces, as well as a couple of magnum opuses: Epileptic, Bodyworld, and Jimmy Corrigan.


Stan Sakai is not only a skilled cartoonist, he's also probably the nicest man in comics. If you haven't read Usagi Yojimbo, I strongly suggest that you give it a try.

This visual mess is actually in the right order, believe it or not. Marvel changed their "Masterworks" jacket design three times, which makes for one ugly bookshelf. Anyway, this shelf contains The X-Men, The Fantastic Four, The Avengers, Captain America, and Iron Man.

And here we have The Amazing Spider-Man, Daredevil, Doctor Strange, The Silver Surfer, Thor, and The Incredible Hulk, plus Miller's Spider-Man, Kirby's Eternals, and Gaiman's Eternals and 1602.
Some beautiful European albums, plus Charles Burns's collections and R. Crumb's delightful placemat-doodle collections.

Bookcase no. 5

Sirius Entertainment's entire output from beginning to end, plus Scott McCloud's Zot! and Rob Schrab's SCUD: The Disposable Assassin.

Some more beloved series: Mike Allred's Madman, Carla "Speed" McNeil's Finder, Jeff Smith's Bone, Trudy Cooper's Platinum Grit, Hewlitt and Martin's Tank Girl, Peter Bagge's Hate, and Mark Oakley's Thieves and Kings.

Larry Hama's G.I. Joe was my entry into comics circa 1985, so this collection of the first 50 issues is personally important for that reason. And Bill Sienkiewicz's art in The New Mutants is of near-equal importance. Brian Michael Bendis's Powers is good, too.

I was never much of a DC fan, but here's my collection of DC-related works. Watchmen, of course, is a big deal. Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns, too. The rest of this stuff isn't that important to me, except Brian K. Vaughan's Y: The Last Man, which is a great series.

The "I don't care how much it costs--I'm buying it!" shelf. Super-primo-deluxe editions of Alan Moore's Lost Girls and Watchmen, Neil Gaiman's The Sandman, all of Don Martin's gags from Mad Magazine, and The Complete Far Side, by Gary Larson.

Bookcase no. 6

More great series, including David Lapham's Stray Bullets (incomplete--as I failed to buy volume 4 when it was available, damn me!), Robert Kirkman's The Walking Dead, and Matt Wagner's Mage. Other notable books on this shelf: Spiegelman's Maus, Alison Bechdel's Fun Home, Howard Chaykin's American Flagg, and Eddie Campbell's Alec. Peeking out from behind the books on the right are all the volumes in Dark Horse's digest reprint of Kazuo Koike and Goseki Kojima's Lone Wolf and Cub.

Another random assortment of stuff, arranged mostly by convenience (i.e., size). Notable are Shannon Wheeler's Too Much Coffee Man and Chynna Clugston's Blue Monday.

More books that don't really go together.

Some Vertigo and Image series, including the excellent Fables by Bill Willingham, The Unwritten by Mike Carey, The Maxx by Sam Kieth, and Adam Warren's Gen13 spinoff, Magical Drama Queen Roxy. On top of these books are some comic books from my dad's childhood that he gave to me when I was a kid.

The kids' shelf. Calvin and Hobbes, Pogo, Mickey Mouse, Carl Barks's Donald Duck, Doonsbury, Bloom County, and Scary Godmother (which actually belongs on the Sirius Entertainment shelf but wouldn't fit).

Bookcase no. 7 (top shelf)

Notable on this shelf are the two Clowes books, Dave McKean's Cages, Chris Ware's sketchbooks (I'm a sucker for a good sketchbook), Brandon Graham's King City, and Bill Mauldin's Willie & Joe collections.

Bookcase no. 8

As mentioned in my previous post (about my fiction books), Archie was the single most important comic book series to me as a kid. I'm grateful to Dark Horse for their current reprints project. I'd also be grateful to IDW if their reprints weren't so halfassed, qualitywise.

Another catch-all shelf. Barry Smith's two books are the gems here.

Some random garbage, and my Advanced Dungeons & Dragons books.

Displaced Stragglers Waiting for a Home

I should really find a place on a shelf for Bryan Lee O'Malley's Scott Pilgrim series, seeing as it's one of the funniest comics of the last hundred years. Hayao Miyazaki's Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind is also very good.

Old, old books that I could probably get rid of and never miss except for the fact that I'm literally incapable of ever getting rid of anything. It's a sickness.

The books that refuse to fit on a shelf. "Fuck shelves!" say these books. So they sit in the corner smoking cigarettes and passing judgment on the other shelf-sized, "sell-out" books, like the rebels they are. (Actually, The Invisibles would fit on shelf. But I'd have to buy a one-shelf shelf to fit Kramers Ergot 7 on a shelf. It's ridiculously big. I've never even been able to read it. How the hell would I??)