Fantastic Four - Jack Kirby, John Buscema, John Byrne, Walt Simonson, what do you do? I don't want Kirby spread out across many titles, so I choose to split up and file the run of FF by artists. All the good artists are being reprinted in the hc Masterworks, and the Essential phonebooks. And in the case of Essentials, you are faced with a problem splitting up by artist, but they can stand alone, so no big problem there. I prefer tp's and hc's to Essentials, but some things are only reprinted in Essentials, especially bronze age.

They are read, tossed on a shelf, and forgotten.
I have no idea what I have or where it is.
I purge about every 10 years.
I'm 2 decades behind in my purging.

Sounds a bit like me, only I'm also 2 decades behind in my actual reading.

Mostly by title, but if a book changes title (and keeps the numbering), I file them by the original title.

F'rinstance: Thor gets filed under "Journey into Mystery"

Hopeless hodge-podge of filing techniques.

My childhood comics I keep separate, and they're kind of jumbled. Sort of alphabetical by title. But I used to keep Marvel and DC separate. And I have a sort of separate section of things I don't have many have.

Then I have "time machine" projects where I've been reconstructing certain years by month. I have tabs in those for the year and month. So I can go to that month and pull out all the comics that came out. Kind of like Mike's Amazing Time Machine.

My recent ones (the past 6 years or so) are hopeless. For titles I like and have been buying consistently, I organize them by title. But then I'll chuck just about everything that goes with it in there, in time order. So the "Captain America" title has the Rebirth (or whatever it was) mini in it, now Steve Rogers, etc. One tab for Avengers family titles -- I just chuck them in in chronological reverse order.

But most of the comics I buy I chuck in a box called "unsorted." I eventually get rid of them or recapture them.

Since I'm down to a manageable amount of comics these days, I went through last summer and removed all the bags and boards and sorted the comics by storyline, rather than title, where appropriate. If a book crossed over (as sooooo very many did and do), I put the full story in whatever title the first part was in. Makes it much more fun to pull out a stack and read them, without hassling digging through another box for the rest of a story.

I file by my own personal "recommended reading order." So theoretically anyone could just come in, crack open a box, start reading from the front comic and have a satisfying experience.

Filed by title, but I use playlists to arrange them in special reading sequences. For example, the three B&B intro issues for JLA are filed with B&B, but are also the first 3 titles in my JLA playlist. Once you go digital, many things become possible.

I was confused at first when you said "playlist." Then I read the last line and was un-confused.

My trades are alphabetical on my bookshelf. My comics are scattered.

Yeh, it's still called a playlist. I agree, it sounds wrong.

Alphabetical, I'm boring.

How do you do the playlists?

http://sourceforge.net/projects/java-comix

Use CDisplay otherwise. (Unfortunately the CDisplay programmer abandoned it right before adding playlists, which he had announced was going to be in version 1.9.)

java-comix was last updated 994 days ago.

Thanks, I'll try it.

The last few years have seen an explosion of digital comic collecting, all being read on abandoned apps. It's really sad. But the future seems to be in iPad apps and the equivalent. Can't remember the name of it — you'll know which one, Steve — there's an app for tablets and phones which is being designed by people from the scanning scene, so it really addresses the wants and needs of comic book lovers.

I hadn't heard that, Linda, but the ComicZeal people had CBR / CBZ support built in right from the start. Dunno if any of its developers were scanners.

There are newer CBR readers for the PC, but they're all bloatware.

ComicZeal! That's the one. For iPad and iPhone only, I think?

I agree about the new PC readers, they're all crap ... they're never even mentioned in the scene ... I still use the reverse engineered CDisplay 1.8.5.1 from a few years ago. If I had a clue about programming I'd try to update CDisplay myself.

A couple of people have tried. This one's pretty good:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/cdisplayex/

I am just happy that my comics allow me to live in the same house with them.