Hello and welcome to Shelf Porn, where fans show off their collections. Today's shelves come from Bill on the outskirts of Chicago, who shows us his comics, trade paperbacks, statues, art prints and more, with special guest appearances from Jim Lee and Grant Morrison.
Want to contribute your own shelves? Find all the details here.
Take it away, Bill ...
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I live in the suburbs of Chicago, Illinois. I've been collecting comic books since the first grade (I just turned 28), and thanks for a wonderful mother I've been going to Chicago Comicon/WizardWorld every year since the third grade. I have a really solid collection of original sketches and autographs from the shows, but until my roommate moves out and I have a whole room to display them they have to stay boxed. I'll walk you through my collection as you would see it if you were actually in my house.
I went to my first San Diego Comicon in 2011 and caught the premiere of Captain America there. They were providing free Mondo Posters, so being a fanboy I had to frame it because it's an awesome poster and it always reminds me of SDCC. I know Steve Rodgers should command more respect than my bathroom, but until my roommate moves out and I have a dedicated comic book room it will have to make due.
This is the main living area of my house and where I house all of my trades. I just got into trades probably 3 or 4 years ago, before that I was all about the single issues. But space began to be an issue, and now I've grown to like the trade format better. One benefit of living in the Chicago are is that we have two pretty big shows every year, C2E2 and Chicago Comicon so many of these are signed. I absolutely love flipping through a trade and seeing that Mark Millar or Scott Snyder personalized something for me. I really enjoy the size and production quality of DC Absolute's, i just wish they collected more for the price point. A lot of these trades I was able to pick up at shows for a pretty good deal, but others like Starman I could not wait to become collected and bought on release day.
This is my prized possession. I think I was in the first grade when my dad bought me X-Men #2, my first comic book. Years later I met Jim Lee and explained to him how much this comic meant to me. He was nice enough to take a picture with me (great guy).
this is what you see as you move through the house and ascend to my bedroom
This is my Stan Lee Wall. A signed reprint of Hulk 1, Avengers 1, and Uncanny X-Men 1. I got a little lucky with these, Uncanny X-men is personalize to me because I was 12 when I got it, and Avengers has a nice Excelsior! written on it
I work from home one day a week so it is somewhat important for me to have a workspace I really enjoy. And what's more enjoyable than Batman? Frank Quitely is my favorite artist so naturally the first bust I ever purchased was his from the Batman Black and White series. In the last year I realized how lonely he looked so i added Frank Miller and Paul Pope's as well. ?On the far right there is a picture of me and Grant Morrison from SDCC '11, he's my favorite writer and honestly I should get it framed.
About a year and a half ago I had to get rid of about two thirds of my single issues. They were honestly encompassing all of my room and a great majority of my parents basement. I knew there was no way I could fine space for all of them in my new house with a roommate. When my roommate moves out and I change his room into a comic book room I hope to have these proudly displayed.
Thanks Bill! If you’d like to see your collection featured here on Robot 6, here’s what you need to do:
1. Take some photos and save them as jpgs.
2. Write a little something about your collection
3. Send them to me in an email.
Some additional tips:
1. Although we don’t have a minimum or maximum limit on photos, usually 10-15 should suffice. They also don’t need to be huge, so if you can shrink them down so they are less than 1000 x 1000, that would be great. You can help make your collection look nice by being sure to focus, use the right lighting, dust your shelves beforehand, etc.
2. You can either write something up that’ll appear at the beginning of the post, or you can describe each item. Be sure to indicate where each image should be placed within your write-up, but don’t embed the images into a Word doc. Just put the file name in brackets where you want the image to appear.
3. When sending images using something like YouSendIt or DropBox, please keep in mind that I may not get to your submission for a month or more, so make sure you don’t delete them or that they won’t expire.
4. Please include your name (just your first name is fine) and location with your write-up.