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I had a friend come over and ask me what was in the long white boxes in my home office. To any one who collects comics they are known as “long boxes”.  I told her they were my comics and then she asked me “Why do you keep your comics boxed up? I thought you would want to show off your collection?” After coming up with a quick answer, I thought about her question. In the end I came up with another question “What’s so great about hiding away comics?”

I’m sure some of you are thinking that putting away comics is the best way to keep them in the best readable condition. Putting a comic book in a bag with a board and storing it in a giant box keeps its usefulness and its value over time. Okay while that might be true what about showing off your collection? My collection, and probably yours, is not on display in the most aesthetically pleasing way. Sure I can state the size of my collection and its grandness, but all I have to show for it is a stack of long white boxes.

As comic readers I think we’ve hit the pinnacle of at how we can store our comics: bags, boards, and boxes. We still have ways to go for displaying our comics. No one is impressed by boxes and rarely are people interested in stacks of boxes. People are interested when a collection is displayed or easily accessible to them. I know Drawerboxes makes comic boxes that allow owners to access their comics more easily than in the past (not an advertising plug). I see that as a step in the right direction, books have bookshelves, spoon collectors have spoon cabinets, and figurine collectors have shelves, what should comic collectors get? If you can make accessing your comics easier than you can make them approachable.

People have photos on their walls and photos in albums, why can’t my collection evolve into something like that. I can display comics in protective frames and keep the more rare ones in the boxes in my room. Then if some one is interested I can show them… my boxes. Okay, so it’s not perfect yet. I’m working on it though. As readers we know comics are great so why do we settle for a storage method that hides them away? I’m not going to do that. Maybe that Swedish furniture store might have something for me, who knows. All I know is that comics are meant for more than just reading and storing away.