The Sorting. The Fucking Sorting.

[Tom Foolery]

Here’s all* the boxes from my parents’ house moved down into the basement. I Jenga’d the stack on the end for stability.

*minus 8 boxes that I got while in college from 1999-2005 before I moved out to CA. Those eight boxes I’m going to condense into the vast collection of drawer boxes.

[Tom Foolery]

And here’s the drawer boxes in the next room. The top lids in the pic in the last post are on the other side of the wall with the Earth/Moon poster. The boxes on the left are alphabetized. And so are the ones on the right.
But they aren’t alpahabetized together. That’s my next sorta project.

[jjreason]

Beautiful.

[Tom Foolery]

As I was bringing them over last week, I was peeking into each box to ‘reacquaint’ myself with the contents. Some of these comics I had not seen in over thirty years. I got a little choked up when I found my Transformers run which started this whole obsession.
But the other couple things I saw were that teenage me didn’t have the funds to bag/board every comic(which I thought I had). There were random chunks of issues just unbagged in the boxes. Some runs, like my GIJoe, I forewent boards and had multiple issues in one bag. And there’s a bunch of issues that have those old boards that are only coated on one side. The kind of boards I now immediately replace.
The second thing I saw was that my alphabetizing system was completely different from the one I currently use. Now I’ll put stuff like Action Comics and Advs of Superman in the Superman box, but back then they were in the ‘A’ box. Likewise books like Web of Spider-Man would go with all the Spidey stuff, and not be in the ‘W’s. New Teen Titans was in the ‘N’. Now I’d be more likely to put them in the ‘T’s with the other Titans books. Those are just a few examples. It will be an extra added detail when I eventually move them all into drawer boxes to re-sort, and replace bags and boards.


But in the meantime, I have decided to start merging all the other stuff in the basement into one cohesive collection. And here’s my first quandary; it’s early so I’m still in the ‘A’s specifically the Avengers. There’s been several Avengers ongoings, and dozens of miniseries. My question is, do I put the miniseries in behind the ongoings they came out with? Or do I just put all the miniseries together after ALL the ongoings?
And do I put the miniseries in chronological order of release, or some kind of alphabetical order based on their subtitle?

Whatever system I choose is gonna be the one I use on other big ‘franchise’ runs like Batman, Spider-Man, Iron Man, Hulk, Justice League, X-Men, etc. Any runs that have several ongoings and multiple miniseries/oneshots. I want to be consistent.

[Tom Foolery]

Went into slight panic mode. Condensing the ‘B’ boxes and got to the Black Panther stuff, only to find I was missing issue 2, the first appearance of Shuri, which is quite expensive. I had two issue 3’s and thought, ‘oh fuck, did I write the wrong issue down back in 2005 and didn’t figure out my mistake until just now??’
I double checked my master list on cbrealm and saw I have two issue 1s and two issue 3s, as well as issue 2. So somewhere there was a bag that had 1 and 2 in it. I just couldn’t find it. But I found them. Whew.

[jjreason]

That's a relief. I remember having to reacquire DD 157 at one point knowing I already had it... I still haven't ever found that other copy.

[Tom Foolery]

Mark Waid did a trilogy of series from Boom! studios back in the mid-00s. Irredeemable, Incorruptible, and Insufferable. I’ve decided to keep them all together in the boxes, but I’m not sure if I should slot them in in alphabetical order under ‘Inc’ or ‘Irr’. Inc comes first of the three alphabetical, but Irr was the first of the three series, the other two being continuations/spin-offs of the first series.

It’s not a huge difference overall, since they’re all gonna be in the ‘I’ boxes, but there’s a TON of issues between the two. Indiana Jones, Infinity, Inc, Iron Fist, and a BUNCH of Iron Man just to name a few titles would separate where they’d get placed.

[jjreason]

Keep them together as one run in my opinion, using the name of the first series for placement. I love order, but I also consider I might want to read that shit again some day.

[Tom Foolery]

Keep them together as one run in my opinion, using the name of the first series for placement. I love order, but I also consider I might want to read that shit again some day.

I decided to put them after Iron Man, starting with Irredeemable, and then the other two series after that. Which worked out nicely, because the previous two boxes, one ended with all of Iron Fist’s series, and the next box was exclusively Iron Man up thru Fraction/Larocca’s run. Then the next box started with Kieron Gillen’s run and had a bunch of IM minis and oneshots, and the Irredeemable trilogy almost filled that box. There was a smattering of James Bond, Jack Kirby:Fourth World, Jinx etc at the end, but it’s more satisfying when a box finishes exactly with a run’s end. It doesn’t always work out that way.

[Tom Foolery]

The next conundrum; I found half the “Just Imagine…Stan Lee created” oneshots BEFORE all the Justice League stuff. And I just slotted them in because it was like six prestige format books and it took up less than in inch of the box.

Then I sorted thru all the Justice League, and JLA and all the spinoffs and minis and oneshots. And it’s like a solid three straight boxes worth of stuff. Then I got thru all the Justice Society and JSA and assorted spinoffs, minis and oneshots, and that took up another box

Then I found the other half of the ‘Just Imagine’ oneshots. Ugh. I can probably go back and squeeze them into the box four boxes back and only have to transfer a few issues of the original pre-Crisis Justice League run that ended in the 80s into the front of the next box.

But does J-U-S-T-I-M come before of after J-U-S-T-I-C? Or should the word ‘Just’ come before the word ‘Justice’? I already put Alex Ross’ Justice maxi series before any of the JLA stuff, even though it could be considered a spinoff series that would go after all the legit JLA ongoings. So either way, it feels like I’m not following my own rules with the ‘Just Imagine’ books.

[Tom Foolery]

Got to The Outsiders. I had the original Batman&Outsiders books wayyyy up in the ‘B’ box with the other Batman stuff. Then I found the back half of that series, as well as several other Outsiders runs. Then another Batman & Outsiders series from the early 2000s that also reverted back to Outsiders halfway thru the series.
So, should everything go in ‘O’ for Outsiders, regardless of whether Batman’s name is also on the logo, or should the Batman stuff go back with the rest of Batman's books?

[jjreason]

It would be in a batman box for me, same as New Warriors is somewhere amidst my spider business.

[Tom Foolery]

Hmmm…the original BM&O ran for 32 issues, then in ‘86, it switched titles to Adventures of the Outsiders and ran for another fourteen issues, ending with 46.
When the books switched names, a second direct market Outsiders title printed on baxter paper began in ‘85 and ran for 28 issues, plus an annual and a Special that crossed over with Infinity, Inc.
After a five year hiatus, Outsiders returned in ‘93 for a series that ran 24 issues, and then another ongoing began in 2003 and ran 50 issues, plus an annual.
After a five issue transition mini called Outsider:Five of a Kind, the book was replaced with a second Batman & Outsiders ongoing, but Batman was dropped from the title after 14 issues, and the series finished on issue 40.
Nu52 hit and Outsiders didn’t get any love for several years, until 2019 saw a third Batman & Outsiders series run for 17 issues plus an annual.
The most recent iteration was a 12 issue maxi series that came out this year.

I think the original ‘83 run will go in the ‘B’ box, up until the name change, and everything else, up thru the 2011 run, is going in the ‘O’ box. Everything after that is in the newer boxes, and I’m pretty sure BM&O 3.0 is in the Batman boxes. I only got the first issue of the current series.

[anarky]

I honestly didn't realize the Outsiders had that many issues in print.

[Tom Foolery]

The Punisher was a hassle. It was fine with the original three ongoings, then the brief reboot, followed by the ‘supernatural’ mini. Then the Welcome Back, Frank maxi series, and the Marvel Knights ongoing.
But then there was the MAX ongoing, which they eventually decided was a separate universe, and the main universe ongoings. So would I put the MAX stuff separate after all the regular books, or put them chronologically like I would every other franchise with multiple titles? And then all the oneshots and minis; do they also get split between regular and MAX, or just lump them altogether? There were also minis that were basically codas to certain ongoing runs, so I put them with the ongoings, rather than with all the other minis at the end of the box like Remender’s In the Blood, and Rucka’s War Zone.

The other thing was I found a limited series that Marvel released in the early 2000s. I had it in the ‘O’ under 100 Greatest Marvels(phonetically it’s ‘One hundred. Which is why it was in the ‘O’s) But I decided it should go back in the Marvel box, except that was like ten boxes ago and it’s too much to squeeze in somewhere. Each of the first five issues are 3-4 older stories voted on by readers, so the issues are super thick. The final five issues are single stories. I also was planning on putting all the Marvel Legends issues that came with the action figures in the ‘Marvel’ box, but I forgot about them. So between the ML and the 100 Greatest, I’ve got like a third of a full box. But to slot it back in where the other Marvel stuff is, I’ll have to move a bunch of boxes one slot over. Annoying.

Thirdly, I have the Scarlet Spider ongoing that starred Kaine from 2012 in it’s proper alphabetical location, right after Scalped. But I’m wondering if I should move it with ALLLLLL the other Spidey books.