That looks like a cool place to hang out, George. Would love to spend an afternoon with you in there, sitting around reading comics and talking nonsense.

I've been living in apartments my entire adult life and I just couldn't keep growing a collection. It was one thing when I had a two-bedroom apartment, alone, and used the spare as a studio/office, with my comics. When I moved back home, after the military, I stored things in the garage, on a pallet I brought home from work, but that was getting unwieldy and that was when I started divesting myself of my floppy collection. I had a 6 ft long, 3 tier shelving unit that I used for graphic novels and art books, which I easily filled. After I got my own place again, I had that unit, plus another book case for graphic novels and trades (and some coffee table art books), then about 3 other bookcases filled with books (hardcover and paperback) I didn't have room in my living room for any more book cases because of the VHS tapes (then the DVDs that replaced them). When I moved to another nearby city for work, I moved 20+ boxes of graphic novels and trades, as well as prose and other books, and another 20+ of DVDs. I moved to a 2 bedroom townhouse and had room for a library; but, that changed when barb moved in with me and I had to pare down the books, just to have some storage space. When we moved to where I live now, I needed to divest more books and got rid of most of what I still had in the 6 ft unit (it didn't survive trying to move it downstairs anyway) and now have a bookcase my dad built me with books, another with music CDs and on old commercially built bookcase (actual wood, not pressboard or plastic) with the remained of the books I kept.

My comics collection now is an 8TB external hard drive, which sits next to a 16TB external hard drive that Barb had bought to store movies and tv shows, I discovered, after her death (I though she was running them on her computer from an online source and the external hard drive was all the music she had copied and downloaded...that turned out to be on an 8TB Hard Drive, which I have on a shelf, at the moment).

On the hard drive, I have the files organized by DC, Marvel, Archie, Harvey, Warren, Western/Gold Key, Golden Age, Independents, Fanzines, Reference, Foreign, UK, Undergrounds, and Specific Properties (for things like the various Shadow comic books, or Star Wars, or Planet of the Apes, etc, plus newspaper strip collections). Golden Age is broken down into publisher and then title, with the issues in the title folder. Independents is the same. Golden Age is everyone other than the majors, up through the 50s and Independents is primarily 1970s on, though the few 60s indies, like Tower, are there, instead of Golden Age. Fanzines are broken down by title and include things liek FOOM, Amazing World of DC, Alter Ego, The Comics Journal, Amazing Heroes, Comics Interview, etc, plus a few books put out by fanzine publishers, like TwoMorrows. Reference has the comic book histories that I have in pdf or CBR files, plus art books,, things like the DK Publishing DC and Marvel books, stuff like Beyond the Batcave or Avengers: The Earth Wreckers, stuff like the TwoMorrows Companion Books (THUNDER Agents Companion, Kimota: The Miracleman Companion, the MLJ/Archie Companion, etc...), images of old trading cards, the Peter Pan Records comic files and the audio files that went with them, etc, etc. It is kind of a catch all for comic related stuff or parallel collectibles.

I do sometimes have trouble remembering where a specific digital file is, but I can run a search to find it, which beats digging back and forth through long boxes, which were stacked one on top of the other, like my old collection. I also don't have to shift things if I add new titles. Just transfer them into a specific file or add a new file folder for them.

Foreign has international comics, mostly in English, though I have others in either Spanish or French (a few in Italian). I can read enough Spanish to get the gist of things, but can make do with French or Italian, in a pinch. most are English translations, though, from Heavy Metal, Catalan, NBM, Cinebook or Europe Comics (or publishers like dark Horse, who dabbled in Foreign reprints) There is some manga, but not a lot, as my tastes are a bit more select there...more of the early wave stuff, like Lone Wolf & Cub and Mai The Psychic Girl, than things like One Piece or Yu-Gi-Oh, which dominated our manga section, at Barnes & Noble. UK has stuff like 2000 AD and other UK-based publications. I found a source for a lot of British comics, from Dan Dare, to things like the characters from the Albion mini-series, to stuff like Charly's War, Modesty Blaise, a little Romeo Brown, Jane, Heros The Spartan and the tv-related ones, with Gerry Anderson shows and Doctor Who, or The Avengers.

That is great, my friend.

I enjoy the physical nature of books, more than comics, which is probably why they lasted longer, as a physical presence in my home. For comics, a waning enthusiasm for a lot of mainstream stuff, coupled with the increase of book collections led to getting rid of the floppies. Once they were gone, there was the occasional regret; but not many, since I had the digital, to enjoy the art. Books have been a different story and I miss not having my whole library. My lottery dream is a place of my own, with a big library, filled with my books, going back to childhood, my comics, and favorite magazines, like Filmfax and Outre, special issues of Starlog or Cinefantastique and similar. I have a lot of that digitally (except the books) and it is enough; but, I would need the room to have that much physical stuff. Still, the library was always a magical place, to me, and bookstores, by extension (which made leaving Barnes & Noble so hard, but the company and my DM made it pretty easy, since life was becoming pure hell). There is just something about walking along and scanning shelves and then spotting something, pulling it out and sitting down and reading it. With comics, the closest feeling to that was in searching long boxes in comic shops, preferably ones with a variety of material, from a long period of publication. I hated digging around in stores with a mediocre back issue inventory, as I would feel like I was wasting my time and it felt like they had no standards. Same for used book stores that had junk tossed everywhere and showed little interest in stuff beyond rows of old Harlequin Romances and whatever the fad thriller was.

I have all my Spider-Man comics filed under 'D' for Ditko.

Was that your stash I saw on Doomsday Preppers?