The Sorting. The Fucking Sorting.

[jjreason]

I would have kaine in with my spidey for sure (and likely do). I'm not sure if I've shown you my spreadsheet or not yet & I'm also not sure if I can link it or anything - but I have managed to catalogue the vast majority of my stuff & included clues as to which box it was all in for the future. Maybe I can take a screenshot or something, bear with me.

[Tom Foolery]

How many long and drawer boxes do you have? And how often do you rearrange their contents?

I feel like I’m continually shifting books around too much to put them in a ‘location’ in a database.
The closest I get is taking a old backer board that’s either yellow and gross, or the wrong size, or brown cardboard on one side; and sliding it into the front of the box. Then I’ll outline the handhold hole with a pen and in the oval I just made, I’ll write the first title in the box and the last title in the box.
If all the boxes are in order, I can quickly find where a specific issue or run is.

The next thing, which is slightly-in-the-future me’s problem, is that the current books’ drawerbox situation will probably reach capacity in about a year and a half. If I’m planning on living another 30-40 years and collecting all that time, I need to….find a solution…

[jjreason]

I don't rearrange very often - if I did I guess I'd go & try to update the spreadsheet. The main purpose of that column was to help me pull stuff for selling. 6 drawers, 18 longs & 3 shorts. Obviously your project would be much more arduous, but I just plugged away at it one box at a time after I had a friend tell me he'd buy the whole shebang for 60 percent of the value of the keys. I had to think about that for a second.

[Tom Foolery]

Just finished the Superman boxes. The next sorting conundrum; should I put Team Titans in its ‘proper’ place which would precede TMNT stuff, or should I consider it a Teen Titans series and put it behind the main TT books.

Also, currently Teen Titans and Titans are separated alphabetically by a large Thor run(and other series like Thanos, Thunderbolts, etc). I’ve always sorted them that way. But considering that the Titans are the exact same lineup of characters(Nightwing, Cyborg, Raven, etc) just having dropped the Teen part of their name, should I move the Titans comics up behind the Teen Titans in the boxes?

[jjreason]

Mine are split by publisher so it wouldn't be an issue at my house (not to be an asshole, just what I do) - but yes, Titans for sure after Teen titans.

[Tom Foolery]

Mine are split by publisher so it wouldn't be an issue at my house (not to be an asshole, just what I do) - but yes, Titans for sure after Teen titans.

If I consider them one “title” with ‘Teen’ (or ‘New Teen’) just being a modifier of Titans (like Sensational and Spectacular being modifiers for Spidey) then do they go before or after the Thor stuff. Because if I’m doing different books under the same brand, then the next ordering choice becomes chronological, and they’ve alternated Teen Titans and Titans books over the years. Or just put all the various Teen Titans runs first, and then all the Titans runs after.

[jjreason]

Getting complicated - Teen titans & titans all interspersed based on order of release. Unlimited (ongoing) volumes first, limited series in release order behind. One shots & specials next, then crossovers that don't go someplace else (ie behind your Batman books) after the limited series. I put "annuals" in with their respective series - but at the end, so I'll have Uncanny X-Men annuals at the end of each volume instead of at the end of the entire series. This shit keeps me up at night when I'm working on it.

[Tom Foolery]

Is like that for me also. And when I get to the X-Books and you have alt-universe books like X-Men Forever or the retcon books like Early X-Men, Hidden Years and Professor X and the X-Men. At that point I’m getting sick of the entire organizing process and I’m like “Fuck it, I’m just throwing shit anywhere.

[Tom Foolery]

When the first Thor run ended in 1996, the series reverted back to Journey Into Mystery for the remainder of the series up to 521, I put that original JiM run in the ‘J’s.
But the second time it reverted back to JiM after issue 621 and went until issue 655, I left in the Thor run because Gillen’s Loki storyline was linked to Fraction’s Thor run and they crossed over a few times. It’s very satisfying getting all the issues from JMS thru Jason Aaron’s run in the same box and in order.

[jjreason]

I'm still missing many of Kieren Gillen's JIM issues & I don't like it.

[Tom Foolery]

I'm still missing many of Kieren Gillen's JIM issues & I don't like it.

It was such a great meta-narrative about characters being trapped in the roles assigned them, and even if Loki wanted to try and change, he couldn’t because we, the readers, expect him to be the antagonist in Thor’s story, so he’s essentially stuck.
Some guy online did an interview with Gillen and they did a deep dive deconstructing the series. Incredible. I’m too lazy to go find it.

[Tom Foolery]

Erfff….while I was sorting the New Teen Titans books, I noticed a sticky residue on the cover of my NTT #1. It’s like the tacky rubber cement stuff left from when you peel off a price sticker. There isn’t a lot, but it’s in like four different places in small amounts on the cover. I’m going to have to look up how to carefully remove it without grinding it into the cover. The white cover. Grrrrr…it had to be the super fucking expensive book. At least issue 2 is clean. That’s Deathstroke’s First Appearance and it’s worth even more.

And I was finishing up my Ultimate sort, I found a few issues of the Animated Series Ultimate Spider-Man series. I’m pretty sure I had a few issues that I put in the ‘M’ box with the other Marvel Universe Animated books, like Avengers. And then I think I had a few more that I put in the ‘S’ stuff with all the other Spidey books. So now I have issues from one series in three different locations.

The good news is I’m getting down towards the end of the alphabet.

[Tom Foolery]

Flunky tits! As I was putting a run of Unknown Soldier in order, I noticed several issues missing. I looked over the few remaining boxes and discovered one I thought was a ‘W’ box was actually a ‘T thru W’ box.

Which means I have to redo and reorganize the last five boxes. Everything from Transformers up to Unity is gonna get shifted. Fruck!!!!

[Tom Foolery]

I’m in the homestretch! Just started the X-Men. There’s about 8-10 boxes left to sort.
I am wondering where I should put X-Men Classics. It was an ongoing series that ran from 1986 to 1995. If I’m doing ongoing series in chronological order, it would go after the original Uncanny run, but before the Jim Lee series of ‘91. But it’s also a reprint series, so maybe it should get put after all the regular ongoings, but before the endless miniseries.

Here’s my current gameplan:

- Uncanny X-Men, the entire run up to its first ‘final’ issue, and then all the Annuals, even though they restarted the Annuals at 1 towards the end.
- X-Men, which turned into New X-Men, then reverted back to X-Men, then became X-Men:Legacy
- X-Men Unlimited. Started out as a quarterly book. Don’t know if it stayed that way its entire run.
- Xtreme X-Men. This predated Morrison’s New X-Men revamp of the entire line.
- Astonishing X-Men. Whedon’s run started in 2004 after the end of Morrison’s New X-Men run where they reverted everything to a status quo.
- New X-Men:Academy X. Started at the same time as Astonishing, but I think AXM had more of a ‘flagship’ feel to it, so this comes after that. I originally had this in with New Mutants, because it was the same creative team as the NM relaunch around that time, but I moved it during this sorting.

That’s as far as I’ve gotten. I think the next ongoing was the relaunch where they’re fighting Vampires. Then there was the Schism event where Logan and Scott each had their own teams. The all female team is in there somewhere. And there was an Uncanny relaunch where Scott and Magneto were basically the new Brotherhood of Mutants. Gawd, its all confusing and runs together.

But I think X-Men Classic comes after all of those, then the other short ongoings like Professor X and the X-Men, Early Years, Hidden Years, etc.
Then I’ll do X-Men Forever, the alt universe timeline Claremont did if he’d never been run off the book. I was thinking I’d put that after all the minis, but since it’s an ongoing, it moves up. Same with First Class.

Then the minis. Then the oneshots.

[jjreason]

I have a full box of x stuff that I just don't want to bother with - you're not alone. Go fuck yourself, stryfes strike files.