Tips for organizing comics

[edmandu]

I pulled several big white boxes of comics up from the basement over the weekend with the intention of trying to organize and inventory them. They are a big mess - old mixed with new, bagged with unbagged, etc. The only way to find a specific comic is to thumb though all of them. Ugh!  Does any one have any tips on how to best organize the boxes? Alphabetically, by title, by publisher, by year?

[Yoc]

Depends a little on the size of the collection but personally I went by publisher then by year for each era.
Divided by Golden Age, Silver and Modern.

Anyone else?

[Roygbiv666]

Whichever way is easiest for you to find what you're looking for.

When I was organized, it was straight-up alpha-numeric.

Depends a little on the size of the collection but personally I went by publisher then by year for each era.
Divided by Golden Age, Silver and Modern.

Anyone else?

[cimmerian32]

I separate by era, then alph-numeric.

Pulps
Golden Age
Bronze Age
Underground
Copper
Modern

Any series that cross eras, I just group with the era in which they began.

[chaard]

Mi dos centavos (which may or may not be helpful): Much of my physical collection is hopelessly confused. Maybe that's part of the fun, having to leaf thru zillions of issues to find anything specific, like browsing library stacks and encountering serendipitous neighbors. My huge DIGITAL collection is much better organized, because I don't have to find ever-more shelf space. My digitals are arrayed as:

* modern major US-UK publishers
* modern minor US-UK publishers
* vintage publishers, any nation
* 'underground' publishers, anywhere
* European (mostly French-Benelux) publishers
* Manga from any nation, sorted by language
* franchises and creators not tied to specific publishers
* 'other' sections for one-offs, webcomix, etc

My physical collection (or accumulation) of comics is heavily slanted. I have a large set of undergrounds, a fair number of Silver Age, some modern comics, very few Golden Age, and a smattering from Japan, Mexico, Benelux, etc. The few GA comics are mostly mixed with other illustrated magazines of similar vintage. The larger SA set are sorted by publisher and subject, so all the Marvel barbarians are together. The many undergrounds are mostly arranged by title or creator, so all the R.Crumb's are adjacent. Illustrated humor books get their own shelf.

And hey, if you think my comix collection is a mess, you should see my much larger accumulation of music books and sheet music! Guess I'd better scan the better covers before I donate the lot to the local high school music program.

[OtherEric]

I DREAM of eventually organizing my comics.  Right now, they're a complete mess.  About the extent to which they are sorted at all is pre-code is mostly with other pre-code, silver with silver, bronze with bronze, and so on.  I've only got a couple runs which meaningfully jump eras.  My few stray pre-code DC books are mostly together, instead of with any later runs of the titles I might have.  The exception there is Adventure, which has its own box and a bit, which is immediately followed by the other early LSH appearances, which is then followed by the rest of the legion run.  All Dell is considered pre-code even if it's not, really.

The one step I've made recently is getting some drawerboxes.  SO much easier than stacks of boxes you need to move everything above them to get to the one you want.  They're not cheap, though, so the swapover has been gradual.

[Roygbiv666]

Oh, the best one - have someone else do it. Find some poor schlub with OCD, invite them over, and let them be appalled by the mess. Voila!

[narfstar]

We all need a Sheldon