shelf permanence / "consumption platter"
Two episodes into Max's DC documentary (quite good and worth a watch, BTW) and something Jeanette Kahn (I believe) said about trade paperbacks, that they were designed as permanent additions, kept on a bookshelf, struck me: as I've been growing and refocusing The (comics) Collection, I've simultaneously shifted away from purchasing trade paperback collections and towards purchasing the original issues (RONIN, CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS, Moench / Jones BATMAN, ALIAS, SANDMAN MYSTERY THEATRE... etc etc...).
A desire, I think, to have comics' permanence be in their original, serialized form, to bring permanence to something designed (especially in earlier years) to be impermanent...
Among the things I've come to appreciate about the otherwise untapped potential of digital comics (which I'll be ranting about until my dying day, I mean come on) is that I can use those subscriptions (DC, Marvel, Comixology – DSTLLRY is next, definitely) – in this, my "back issue / library building" phase of collecting – to see not only what's going on in current comics (Zdarsky's BATMAN is about the only thing I read regularly and I love Ryan North's FANTASTIC FOUR) but use the digital versions as my reading copies while the originals live in their mylar sarcophagi in a manner not dissimilar to how I collect Blu-Rays and vinyl: more often than not, I leave the discs sealed and use the streaming / digital version (the trade-off for not fucking up the discs themselves being lowered quality) as my primary consumption platter.
All of this being my version of stockpiling food in my bunker for the inevitable day that streamers decide that everything should be a tax write off and delete themselves as soon as you watch it once.
Among the notes in my someday maybe are reorganizing bookshelves to have all physical media – books, comics, vinyl, CDs, Blu-Rays, etc etc – alphabetized by author and living next to one another in the truest reflection of my influences and passions.
