How Do You Shelve Your Comics?

I used to keep all of my comics on a shelf of their own, away from the prose books. I still do this with fiction comics: I arrange these comics by publisher. Here’s a picture of my DC comics, which are followed by Marvel and then by other publishers in alphabetical order.

But last year, when I did a major bookshelf overhaul, I started to wonder why I do this. Comics are a different form of book, but they’re still books. Is it always useful to put comics with comics and prose with prose?

For my nonfiction books, this didn’t make sense anymore. If I want a book on a particular subject, I personally don’t care if it’s a comic or not—I just want to know that it can provide the information I’m looking for. As an example, here is the Gender & Sexuality section of my little home library.

Please ignore the Beanie Baby. I ran out of bookends. #ReaderProblems

Three of the nine books pictured here — Fun Home, Gaytheist, and Taking Turns — are graphic novels, and the rest are prose. But they all illuminate different aspects of gender and/or sexuality, so I want them all together.

This isn’t a completely unheard-of arrangement. At the Barnes & Noble closest to me, certain high-profile graphic memoirs (March and They Called Us Enemy for sure, possibly others) are shelved in the main History section of the store. The rest — even books like Wake that certainly qualify as history books — get lumped into the main Comic Books and Graphic Novels section. It’s like the store thinks that only famous people deserve the “honor” of having their comics shelved with the “regular” books.

Part of the problem might be comics’ unusual and non-uniform sizing. Comics come in all shapes and sizes (check out Taking Turns in the photo above), and some are very large (oh, the trouble Kent State has caused me!), which makes them difficult to fit on certain types of shelves. I’m fortunate that I have adjustable shelves, so when I want to add a larger graphic novel, I can, within limits, move the shelves to accommodate it. If I didn’t have that ability, I’d be more limited in how I could arrange my collection.

In any case, for now at least, I have found an arrangement that works for my needs, and that’s what counts.

How about you? Have you found creative ways to display your comics?