Hello and welcome to Shelf Porn, our weekly visit into the home of a fan. Today’s shelves comes from Chad, who shows off his graphic novels, action figures, original art, Star Wars stuff and more.

If you’d like to see your shelves here on ROBOT 6, you can find instructions on how to do so below.

And now here's Chad ...

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My wife and I have a boy and a girl, my daughter loves to read and my son loves super-heroes so I really lucked out. Last year we converted the smallest room in the house into what I call the “game room” and what they call “daddy’s room.” This first picture is the view of the room in question from the doorway. The color is a Carolina Blue if I remember correctly and the book shelves were from Ikea. I grew up in the seventies and eighties as a fan of Marvel Comics and Star Wars so you are going to see a lot of those influences in here.

The bookshelf on the left is 99% Star Wars. There are books like the Brian Daley “Han Solo and the Corporate Sector” novels from my childhood to the New Jedi Order series of the early 2000’s. That’s when I stopped buying Star Wars novels. I still read, I just use the public library now to try and keep up. On top is my Original Trilogy Special Edition box set and the Chewbacca sitting next to it is actually a backpack that my brother got me when I had my first kid to carry diapers and such. Those with a keen eye will spot a couple Farscape novels before the run on Star Wars begins. On the bottom two shelves we transition from novels to books like the Star Wars Adventure Journals and RPG Handbooks from West End Games. I never got into the RPG but I’m an information junkie and loved seeing some of the stories and backstories for characters created for these. I also have video strategy guides, Galaxy Guides, and Essential Guides. Finally there are a couple years worth of Star Wars Fan Club magazines. The stuffed Rygel was a gift from my mother who became a huge fan of Farscape after I lent her season one DVDs.

To the right we have a set of low bookshelves filled with fiction, science fiction, fantasy, and even a few biographies. Those are Harry and Hermione set of book ends holding up the hardcover “Harry Potter” books. On top are most of my son’s collection of Marvel action figures with the good guys on the left squaring off against the bad guys on the right. They are almost never this neatly organized but we put a little effort in for these pictures. My son is growing up with the movies to drive his fandom, Avengers and Guardians of the Galaxy are his favorites but my childhood influences our purchases too with figures like Luke Cage, Iron Fist, and Nova.

Continuing to our right we have a trio of bookshelves filled with graphic novels, trade paperbacks as well as my collection of mini-busts and a couple bookends. Starting at the top we have the Fantastic Four vs Doctor Doom folding up some too tall Star Wars books. The first shelf holds non-traditional size published works like Andy Sato’s’s “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” series, Jen Van Meter’s “Hopeless Savages” and Adam Warren’s “Empowered.” I can’t for the life of me remember where I picked up the Marvel Mania pitcher. I want to say it was a retailer’s convention that I attended one year while working part-time at JC’s Comic Stop in Toledo, Ohio. If you’re ever in the area, stop in and check them out – the place is huge and the owner Jim probably has just ridiculous amounts of comics and collectibles on hand. My time there supplied me a number of treasured promotional posters and original sketches from industry artists the store had as guests for signings.

I’ve opened the glass doors on shelf two for a better view at mini-busts of some of my favorite characters: Benjamin J Grimm the Thing, Genis Vell Captain Marvel, Richard Ryder Nova , Peter Parker Spider-Man (all from Bowen Designs) and Clint Barton Hawkeye (Gentle Giant Ltd). Other than Spider-Man you’ll notice I tend to gravitate toward secondary heroes. I’m hoping to pick up a nice Union Jack mini-bust this summer at a convention. The next four shelves gets us into the meat of my Marvel & DC trade paperbacks but you’ll also find gems from other publishers like The Authority, Bone, Doctor Who, Ducktails, Grendel, Hellboy, Invincible, Mage, and Midnight Nation.

Rounding the corner we have the skinniest bookshelf with the shelves set a little farther apart. Crowning this is my Ultimate Watchmen hardcover and V For Vendetta mask. I had to put the latter up high to keep the kids from playing with it. The first shelf holds over-sized hardcovers and softcovers like Barry Windsor Smith’s Storyteller. Next we have Bowen Designs’ Galactus statue on shelf two. Down one more takes into some traditional size hardcovers, then Hardcover graphic novels, the Tick trades, and Doctor Who compilations from the Doctor Who magazine. And on the bottom we have predominantly softcover graphic novels from Marvel but the very last book there is the first volume of the Abominable Charles Christopher by Karl Kerschl. An amazing online comic strip that if you’re not familiar with, you should immediately go check out.

Finally the last bookshelf we’ll start with a set of Sandman bookends and statue of their sister Death. I loved to draw as a kid and I’ve picked up a few books you can see here to maybe one day try my hand at it again. The first shelf down we get back into trade paperbacks like Planetary, Powers, PS28, and Queen & Country before opening the doors on my next set of mini-busts. The 200 Annihilation storyline rekindled not only Marvel’s Cosmic storylines but also my love of the characters. Here I have Starlord, Nova, and the Super Skrull staring down Annihilus, Thanos, and Terrax the Tamer. I’d really like a Silver Surfer but haven’t seen one I like enough to add to my collection.

The next four shelves of trades hold standouts like Jill Thompson’s Scary Godmother, James Robinson’s The Shade, Dan Slott’s She-Hulk series, Frank Miller’s Sin City, the fantastic Michael A Stackpole’s Star Wars X-Wing Rogue Squadron, Warren Ellis’ run on Stormwatch, Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing, and Walt Simonson’s Thor. I only read Marvel’s Ultimate line as trades which you can see here covered pretty much everything they published up until Ultimatum. I jumped ship on the Ultimate Universe after that. And finishing off the alphabet we have Robert Kirkman’s The Walking Dead, Phil Hester’s The Wretch, and Brian Vaughn & Pia Guerra’s Y the Last Man.

Now onto the walls! I’ll pull back to show you where we entered but working our way from the bottom up, we have a promo for Barry Windsor Smith’s Weapon X storyline from Marvel Comics Presents, some good advice from Judge Dread, and a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle promo I pulled out from a Previews catalog I think, maybe. As we each the ceiling we have Joe Quesada’s rendition of Batman’s villains (apologies for the glare), and a signed Batman Adventures by Paul Dini.

Finally you get a glimpse at the fourth wall which holds 6 more posters and the few framed comic book pages I’ve purchased over the years. We’ll stay on top with posters from the 1990’s like Craig Rosseau’s promotion for Flash month, Bob Layton’s hall of Iron Man armors, and a happy anniversary to Spider-Man and Mary Jane by Ken Steacy. I hope I got all those names correct, I’m much more writer oriented and struggle more with artists. Plus I’m getting old and forgetful. Moving on… we have Jim Lee’s Galactus & Silver Surfer, Mike Mignola’s Fantastic Four, and Steranko’s Nick Fury Agent of SHIELD – which is actually the cover to issue 1 of Nick Fury Vs SHIELD.

Below those posters I have 8 framed pieces by three artists. The first we see is from an issue of the Mighty Thor by Ron Frenz. Ron was a frequent guest to JC’s Comic Stop and I got to know him pretty well. I missed out purchasing his Marvel Comics Star Wars pages but happily spent my money on this heart-warming page of Eric Masterson and Hercules spending Christmas together. Next to that is a Mark Bagley cover to New Warriors. My boss picked this up for me at a convention while I minded the store. I’m a big fan of Mark Bagley, not just for his beautiful and clean art style but for his part in bringing Richard Ryder back as Nova with writer Fabian Nicieza in the pages of that series. Next duo to the left are two more Bagley pieces from Amazing Spider-Man and they both feature, my favorite, Nova. (Just an aside here to Mr Bendis – if you need any help coming up with an out for killing Rich off in Guardians of the Galaxy, there are any number of his fans out here who are willing to help explain how he could have survived.)

Anywho, dropping down to the next set of frames brings us to my other Ron Frenz original, Shrinking Violet and Green Lantern Rond Vidar art for the Who’s Who comic from DC. I didn’t read a lot of DC prior to Crisis on Infinite Earths but New Teen Titans and Legion of Super-Heroes were the exceptions… and exceptional. And to the right and in the next picture we have three Hilary Barta pages from Marvel’s Thing series. I want to say I nabbed these at Motor City Con in Detroit, one of the earliest conventions I ever attended. I had no idea at the time you could purchase comic book pages and quickly spilled out the last of my few remaining dollars for pages featuring Aunt Petunia’s favorite nephew. The vendor even told me Barta was in attendance and I tracked him down and he very graciously signed all three.

Back onto the first wall, hanging over my Star Wars bookshelf are two Wolverine posters. The first is the movie poster for The Wolverine, I have no idea who did the art though. The second poster is by Frank Miller. I don’t know if this was an original piece he did for an original poster or perhaps a trade dress for his great 4 issue miniseries. I’m just glad it held up so well all these years. We’ll jump across the window to my two most recent poster purchases, and both feature Nova. The top one pretty much encapsulates my childhood and the bottom is the most recent Marvel Universe.

I’ll leave you with three Alex Ross posters: Captain America, Uncanny X-Man, and Amazing Spider-Man. I had much more fun writing this than I thought I would. And wrote much more than I had intended. Hopefully those of you who stuck around reading this all the way until the end were entertained or at the very least amused. Thanks.





















































































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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 up a little something about your collection.

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