The impending end of the Universe (re: DC New 52 reboot) occurred to me as a good time to finally organise my comic collection. It’s been over a decade since I last did it and I’ve moved around a bit during that time. New stuff got boxed as and when there was enough to fill a long box, a lot of stuff wasn’t bagged at all, and that which was bagged now needs to be re-bagged.
On a storage side I just don’t have the room to store the collection at home any more in a way that is accessible so a lot of stuff is going to have to go into an off-site storage locker. If I’m going to do that I feel I need to do it properly with archival quality storage materials and a properly maintained catalogue of what I’ve got and where it is. Most of my stuff isn’t really valuable – it’s mainly 1980s and later – but it still needs protecting.
The biggest problem I faced was normal comic bags. Old comics are inherently self-destructive as the chemicals in cheap paper and plastic degrade and react with each other over time. So normal bags are only okay for short-term storage and the received wisdom is that they should be replaced every 2-5 years. I sorry, but I just don’t have the energy or the time to be constantly re-bagging comics. If I do this I want to do it once and have it done with. That therefore means a bag made from a non-reactive plastic like Mylar.
After a bit of research I settled on 2mil Mylar bags with archival quality half-back boards (3% Ca solution throughout). These bags aren’t cheap, but with some experimentation I found that 2 modern comics will fit in a 7″ Mylites2 with a half-back board. It works out about 12 cents a comic which isn’t outrageous when you consider that the comic book cover price is $2.99 minimum nowadays.
The 2-up only works for modern 32-page comics which are already in pretty good condition. Things like Annuals or 80-pages seem to need a bag on their own or even a 7.25″ bag. I didn’t want to got to 7.25″ for normal issues as they just feel to “baggy” (for lack of a better word) and I wanted to stick with a maximum of two comics per bag. Things should be held securely, but not so securely that newsprint is going to transfer from one page to another.
Doubling up also means that I have odd-numbered issues facing forward and even-numbered issues facing to the back. That works well for continuous runs, but can fall down if you’ve got holes (missing issues). What I chose to do was to deliberately leave gaps for sequences that I intend to finish. For example if I have issues 1,2,4,5 of a series I would use three bags: 1 for #1,2, a second for #4, and a third for #5. That way I can just add #3 to the second bag without having to rebag #5 to maintain the correct order. It’s a little overkill, but it avoids the problem of having to rebag entire sequences to maintain the correct order.
Finally I decided to use scotch tape for holding down the tap (I only use a small amount to hold the tab down, hermetically sealing them isn’t a practical option, but it does keep insects and dirt out). I was really put off by normal cellotape as its made from a cellulose compound which the packaging actual boasts is bio-degradable (something you certainly don’t want around an archival situation). Scotch tape – from experience – seems more stable and has these handy pre-cut dispensers that are just right for bagging comics. I may have to monitor that situation to see whether its worth switching to full archival tape.
As for boxes. I was really tempted by full acid free card-board boxes. Gerber do a range of acid free boxes, but it felt like that it might be overkill. I also avoided the traditional 30″ long box – those things are okay when you’re younger, but they are just too fragging heavy for me. The 17″ model seems fairly standard nowadays – you can get a descent amount in them without them sagging or being impossible to move around. I use to have some even shorter boxes, 14″ I think, which I really liked, but they created the problem of a profusion of boxes. I have seen averts for drawer boxes, but I remain to be convinced.
Bags, boards, and boxes were all fairly logical and scientific to work out. The hard part is working out a filing system. I thought about alphabetical, but that gets problematic if you want to find a lot of stuff that is close in time chronologically – you end up pulling out a lot of boxes for only a few issues out of each. Conversely filing chronologically makes it harder to follow titles across many years. I think I may try a compromise by splitting it down by continuity – Pre-Crisis to Crisis on Infinite Earths, post-Crisis up to Zero-Hour, Issue 0′s until Infinite Crisis, One-Year Later until Flashpoint. That then leaves a completely fresh break for the new upcoming continuity.
Now I just have to put all that into action… this may take sometime!
