No, I have not forgotten about the final three parts of the series on my recent trip to the Metropolis Celebration. I am working on them but once more real life is making it mighty hard to get to this blog, which I am going to rectify hopefully starting today. My goal is post something everyday this month and if I can do that I am pretty sure I can keep it up from there. I actually have some plans for the coming thirty-one days and if everything falls together just right it should be a lot of fun.
At the top of this post you will see my kick ass new keyboard and mouse. They were released in 2006 by i-rocks and I was never able to find any in my neck of the woods. I found these in Metropolis and I have to say that I am very impressed with how well they work. The mouse is much better than the piece of crap I had before and while the keyboard took some getting used to I am vey happy to have a full keyboard again.
Having the keyboard, mouse and mouse pad led me to rearranging some things on the desk so now the shelves of my desk, of which there are five not counting the two places for speakers, are full of my Superman books. Just about all of the reference books, essay collections, original novels and adapatations are within easy reach now so when you add that to the coffee cup to the right of my laptop and the various action figures resting on top of the hutch you get a totally Superman tricked out workspace.
All of which reaffirms that I border on obsessive/compulsive when it comes to my collectibles.
Since I was about twelve or so I started getting anal-retentive about my stuff. I get it from my father really, which is probably a good thing because it keeps me organized. The thing is you can take things too far. Like having to have all of the stuff on my desk be Superman related. I couldn’t just have a piece of Superman and a piece of this and a piece of that. The fact that I have the first series of Superman/Batmanfigures up there is pushing it and the fact that I couldn’t find a Superman or even a Justice League calendar this year resulted in me buying a Spider-Man drives me nuts to this day. Six more months and I should relax on that score.
Then there’s the way I file my books. A sane man or woman would just file them alphabetically by title. Not me. My collection is separated into the following sections:
-
Superman books
-
DC books
-
Marvel books
-
Independent books
Sections 2 through 4 are more or less in alphabetical order, but not those Superman books. Oh no. I have to get cute there as well.
First off you have to deal with what I consider a Superman book, because it’s not only books where Superman is the main character, there’s his family to consider as well. So if Superman is a main character it goes in. If the main character came from or is closely associated with Superman it too goes in. The books where Superman is a member of a team don’t go in mainly because there are times, such as with the Justice League, where he’s not a member and I don’t want to break up that run in the main collection. (Remember, anal-retentive is hyphenated.) I also disqualify books where Superman is a guest star because, again, I don’t want to break up the run.
After all of that I break the comics down into sections. Those sections are:
- Main books (Action, Superman, Adventures of Superman, etc.)
- Team-Up Books
- Out of Regular Continuity Books
- Specials and Mini-Series
- Family Books
- Adaptations and Other Media Related Books
In those sections I decided to go chronological by title. At one point I debated going chronological by issue after watching High Fidelity a billion times, but gave that up for the sake of my sanity and my wife’s sanity. So here, for no other reason beyond my compulsion to post about it, is the road map of my Superman comic book collection.
Ready?
Section 1: Main Books
- Action Comics
- Superman (Volume 1, became Adventures of Superman from issue 424 to 649)
- Superman (Volume 2)
- Superman: The Man of Steel
- Superman: The Man of Tomorrow
Section 2: Team-Up Books
- World’s Finest
- DC Comics Presents
- Superman/Batman
- Trinity
Section 3: Out of Continuity Books *
- All-Star Superman
- Superman Confidential (Given the funky nature of Superman’s history at the moment I consider these out of continuity. This is only my opinion. Your opinion may vary.)
Section 4: Specials and Mini-Series
- All of the mini-series, maxi-series, one shots and specials in alphabetical order
Section 5: Superman Family Books (Which are in alphabetical order for some odd reason)
- Steel
- Superboy (Volume 1)
- Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes
- New Adventures of Superboy
- Superboy (Volume 2)
- Superboy and the Ravers
- Supergirl (Volume 1)
- Daring New Adventures of Supergirl/Supergirl (Volume 2)
- Supergirl (Volume 3 a.k.a The Peter David Series)
- Supergirl (Volume 4, current book)
- Supergirl and the Legion of Super-Heroes
Section 6: Adaptations and Other Media Tie-Ins
- Superman III Adaptation
- Supergirl Adaptation
- Superman IV: The Quest For Peace Adapation
- Superboy: The Comic Book (based on the nineties syndicated series)
- Superman Adventures
- Smallville
And there you have it. My messed up filing system. I don’t recommend it, but it sure does work for me.
This begs the question; how do you file your Superman books?
Actually, it begs the question, “What is wrong with you, Michael Bailey?” but after that it begs the question of how you file your Superman books. Go ahead and use the comment section below and let me know. I am genuinely curious.
More to follow….
* You may have noticed that there isn’t a section for Elseworlds stories. Well, I have those on the book shelf. When they first started putting that stuff out they called them book-shelf editions and that concept sticks with me to this day.
Yeah, I’m weird, but we’ve established this already so let’s move on.