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How to Arrange Comic Books on the shelf

The question how to place comics on the shelf so they are easy to find comes up pretty regularly on various groups and discussions that I've seen. So how should one group them?

Well first of all, fiction and non-fiction should definitely be separated even if they're both listed as "graphic novels" (which seems to be the catch all term most often used. I prefer comics or comic books myself). I'd make sure to mark them as fiction or non-fiction so that they're easy to distinguish and to avoid any confusion/controversy over a factual book being labeled fiction.

I would also keep Manga, comic strips, funnies, cartoons, and other graphic storytelling separate. I say this for a number of reasons. First of all, they're different reading with mostly different groups reading them. Second, the books are all going to be varying in size. Manga for instance tends to be about the size of a paperback book while books with comic strips can be longer books and comic books are about the size of a typical hardcover. Putting this all into the same space can accidentally cause damage to the books (I say this from experience). That does not mean they need to be on different sides of the library or anything like that.. just on different shelves.

All of that should be easy right? Now here comes the tricky part.

First, you organize by company (DC, Marvel, Dark Horse, Image, ect).

this second part is where you can choose as there are two schools of thought here. I'll tell you which way I prefer, but it's really up to you.

The first way is to organize by title. For instance with DC, you'd have Action Comics, then Detective Comics, all down the line in that format. Marvel that means Amazing Spider-Man would be close to Avengers. This is the way I prefer things. But it's obviously not always optimal as Amazing Spider-Man may cross over with Spectacular Spider-Man and Spider-Man for a storyline.

The other way to organize it is by character. So all Superman titles go together under Superman, All Action Comics, Superman, and Man of Steel all go together. And the above mentioned Spidey titles all go together.. in alphabetical order by title.

Both of these work, but this can lead to confusion and issues especially with titles that get relaunched constantly as Marvel has been doing. Again either works, so it's up to you.

Of course, after that you put them in volume order.. Then you hit a snag though. There are 5 different volume ones for Batgirl alone. What do you do?

Well.. you can check any number of these sites Helpful Sites and get an idea of where it falls or..

You can go back to that copyright information and see what year they were published.  As seen below:


This will help you know which is actually the first and keep them in actual order.

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