Saturday, July 28, 2018

Be Our Guest Writer: Welcome to My Space ( no,not Myspace)...



Redartz:  Hello, Bronze Age Alumni! We have a treat today, a guest post from our esteemed friend Humanbelly, or HB as we know him. I've been considering a discussion of how we might set up our ideal comic / treasure room for protection and enjoyment; HB beat me to it! His narrative begins below; in Hulk-green type, of course. Many thanks, and a tip of the BitBA cap to you for your contribution; and now, take it away HB!



HB:  Too Much Exposition Dept:    So Teammates. . . Our basement does indeed have a Comic Book Room.   It is exists as eternal proof that I am married to the Best Wife In The World.  When we were house-hunting in the spring of 2000, we came across this place's open-house about an hour after an owner backed-out of the deal to sell us her house in the same neighborhood, leaving our spirits crushed.  Then we happened across this home, which proved to be SO much better and suited to our needs-- though more expensive.   When we got to the mostly-unfinished basement, there was this one finished room that had been claimed as a bedroom by the previous owners' rather difficult teenage son.  And out of nowhere ('cause the idea truly had never occurred to me) HBWife simply said, "This could be your comic book room. . . "

There was a brief out-of-body experience where the astral forms of Dr Strange and Professor X and Deadman clapped me on the back and gave me the high-sign, and then I returned to the mortal plane and muttered a calculatedly none-too-eager, "Well, sure-- that would be kind of nice, actually.  If you don't think we need it for anything more important. . . "--  and that's how we got a Comic Book Room!

Two things developed over the intervening years, though--

1) It very easily turned into a clutter-filled catch-all room-- especially for things like musical instruments and band equip't.  It also was my primary Christmas headquarters, and would get further trashed with every holiday season frenzy.   Keeping it in order always fell low on the ol' priority list.

2)  HUGE development:  It's a basement.  The room already had a musty carpet, which I then covered over with the salvaged carpet from our own old dining room (previous house).  And I never once thought about getting a de-humidifier.  So there's been about 18 years' worth of slowly accumulating dust/mold/mildew at work down there.  The air has been unpleasant for quite sometime, and last year I finally noticed that EVERYTHING had a thin surface film of dust-like mold on it.   Mind you, not the comics themselves, as they're all safely boxed, but the tons of accumulated "stuff" needed to be cleaned-- and in a few cases, pitched.   Beatles posters and some Z-grade cheap Marvel posters were done, period.

And so, that was this summer's early main project.  Clear EVERYTHING out. Get a de-humidifier running non-stop.  Wipe down/dis-infect/ clean every surface and every object.  I pulled up and threw out all of the carpet, and laid VCT tile (troweled adhesive, not self-stick).   Many beloved posters were salvaged, but had a bit of staining, so those were mounted on backing boards, covered w/ salvaged plexiglass (from my scene shop), and I fitted them with quick plain frames.  Then went about re-designing the room configuration into something more welcoming AND more practical.   There are a number of finishing touches to attend to-- but it's already MUCH more the Comic Book Room I'd imagined it to be, lo, those 18 happy years ago--!



Open the door, and there's a peek!   Lighting at the moment is cheap LED bulbs in the ceiling fixtures, so it does lend a bit of a harsh, institutional tone to the photos.  Better fixtures and shades anticipated.  



Looking at the west wall & telephone corner.   SO many old cartoon paperbacks, MAD pocket books, Andre Norton Sci-Fi from my youth; beloved old collection sets; Books about comics, etc, etc, on the shelves.



South wall. The couch was a LONG time ago used furniture purchase.  It contains a fold-out bed that should be banned by the Geneva Convention as a potential crime against humanity.   My youngest sister-in-law was a huge trouper for a few years, and would try to use it as an auxiliary 2nd guest room, and ultimately just slept on the couch itself (which is amazingly comfortable, tbh).  The black trunk-table has a wild anecdote or two attached involving me and HBSon and a Boston commuter rail train. . .    Note the Marvel 25th Anniversary poster from 1986----

 

Southeast "Hulk" corner (some call it The Shrine, but c'mon-- let's not go overboard. . . )  When first getting the room put together, I did have a bit of an ebay-frenzy looking for cool items to fill it up.  The Hulk Doritos stand-up was a particularly happy find.   But this corner is dominated by sentimental attachment far more than anything like collectibility.  Probably 85% of the Hulk toys and trinkets and "stuff" were given to me throughout my life by friends and family and even just acquaintances who knew how fond I was of the character.   And so they continue to have a place of priority in my heart. . . and in this little museum.   ALSO--  it's great how mounting almost anything under plexiglass and putting it in a frame lends it a sense of gravity and legitimacy--  makes it "important"--!   That shredded piece of purple fabric, framed near the ceiling?   It's my first Hulk t-shirt.  An iron-on transfer my Mom got me from a clothing outlet when I was in 7th grade.   I wore it to DEATH.  Outgrew it, and STILL wore it.   It's perpetually ended up in the rags-box or in the bottom of trunks and boxes. . .and I could never quiiiiite throw it away.  And am now delighted to give it a final position of prominence until it finally does get tossed out by those who proceed me in this mortal plane.   (I've been reading up on some Shakespeare-- preparing for a couple of auditions. . . )



And the north wall, where the storage shelves migrated to.   There are between 30 and 31 long-boxes there (some shorts mixed in)-- my entire personal collection, as well as a small chunk of HBGirl's personal childhood acquisitions that I'm holding onto for her.   And then a flippin' treasure trove of personal memories ranging from my own childhood (the GI Joe "SuperTeam" that I created at one point-- note the capes!) to my kids' (the 30 or so  enthusiastically-used Toy Biz 10" Marvel figures populating that center shelf, and the bound volumes of BLOOM COUNTY that HBGirl adores--), to the lunch-boxes that EVERYONE used at one point or another-- even a begrudging HBWife-- heh--.


And my thought to exit with--  While there are a number of treasures tucked into corners and spots of the room that you don't see here (FOOM poster; framed Avengers poster from the Bomber Jacket era; lots of doodads on the upper shelves, etc),    I've gotten to a happy point in my life where I recognize that the value of all of these trinkets and this stuff is definitely not monetary ('cause, heh, it's not worth a lot o' $$, despite the volume---), but in the fact that it brings me a unique joy--  a zillion little bits of association with happy memories and friends and family.   Items that catch the fancy, and bring a smile.  And other things that represent the thrill of the hunt that comes with being any kind of hobbyist/collector.    It's a cocoon of perpetual nostalgia that continues to move in tandem with the passage of time.   

And now it's mold-free--- whew!!

HB


13 comments:

Charlie Horse 47 said...

Amazing! Thank you for sharing Red. That's really cool!

Anonymous said...

A fascinating look at your comic-book/nostalgia room, HB :)

I've never lived anywhere with a basement or cellar.

Martinex1 said...

HB - thank you for sharing. It is an awesome space and I appreciate your storytelling ability.

It is hard for collectors to deal with the typical dampness and mustiness of basements but it seems you conquered that well.

Do you have your long boxes organized well? I recently pulled some of mineout and realized that some are spectacularly in order and others are a mix-matched-mess. Not even sure what I was thinking - and I stumbled across a dozen or so issues that I don’t even remember buying.

Cheers!

Redartz said...

HB- Amazing looking room you've put together! Glad your loss from moisture was limited. Do you use a dehumidifier now?

Man, I envy you that 1975 Marvel Calendar. Wish I'd kept mine. 12 great mini posters you'll never see anywhere else. Also, love your Pogo books. Walt Kelly, brilliant. Do those volumes collect the whole series, or are they smaller collections? I have several of the vintage paperback volumes, which are getting a bit yellow with age...

Dr. O said...

I LOVE these kinds of posts for several reasons:

1) I love to get a glimpse into the lives of my fellow Bronze Age Babies.

2) I love to see what people value and treasure and how they store and organize them.

3) I love to get ideas for my own "comics room" which I hope to have in the not too distant future.

That said, I wanted more close up pix, esp. of "the shrine."

Thanks HB!

Dr. O said...

OH!

And I find it interesting that your boxes are numbered, not labeled with contents. How do you find stuff?

Anonymous said...

HB, awesome room! I'm jealous!

I'm specifically jealous that you have that Bill Sinkiewicz New Mutants poster and the Maestro action figure. The former is a semi-obscure item by my favorite artist and the latter was an item I only saw once, when it was released in the '90s. I didn't have the cash that day, the store didn't have it the next time I went... Sigh...

- Mike Loughlin

Killraven said...

SWEET!

So many fun points of interest. I could chat it up down there for hours.

Thanks for posting HB!

Mike Wilson said...

Wow, I thought I had a lot of stuff :)

Cool room, HB; I really love that Marvel anniversary poster and I like the Hulk/Thing bookends. On the bottom bookshelf, are those some vintage Tarzan paperbacks (with the Vallejo covers) that I see? I have a couple of those ... great editions.

Humanbelly said...

Wow, hey thank you Teammates--
And thanks so much, Red, for letting me contribute-- man, another check-mark on the ol' bucket list. . . got to create a post on BitBA! (I wonder. . . is this my 15 minutes of fame?The one that everyone's supposed to get? I'm totally good with that, if such is the case!)

Let me helpfully toss back some quick replies to several of the comments and questions, eh?

Colin: Do you live in Britain? Is that correct? I feel like I read somewhere recently that no one in England really has basements-- that houses all just have an extra little building in their back yard (or "garden" is the common word, I believe? Midsomer Murders, et al, provide a good education on that sort of thing. . . )

Marti & Dr O: Numbered longbox storage. 90% or more are indeed in a grouped, alphabetized, numbered system. For the most part. And then 2 or 3 boxes that are just an unsorted disaster of late-acquired books. A few years ago I did a MAJOR sorting, updating, and cataloging--- and have an index written on notebook pages of what each box contains, which is easily referred to when I'm trying to find something. If I were still actively collecting back issues, that might be a problem, since these boxes are flippin' FULL, and adding new issues would become an obvious domino-effect nightmare. BUT-- the collection has been largely static for several years, so it works just fine.

Red: Yep, that's a spiffy new dehumidifier against the wall in that first picture outside the door. And yes, those POGO collections are of the "Complete" variety--- really, a five-star effort which is being overseen by Kelly's family. Highly recommended.

Dr O & Red (and anyone else, actually)-- Ha! I TOTALLY took bunches of pictures of particular individual items and details and such. And then refrained from overwhelming poor Red with unending content. Plus-- I was trying to be mindful of not just rattling on endlessly about minutia that possibly NO ONE but me was ever going to have a lick of interest in. With that in mind, I would be more than happy (flattered, ego-stroked, however one might want to put it) to follow up with another post zooming in on a few of those items and certainly the Hulk Corner. If called upon, I will certainly serve, yup-- (Red and Marti have both slammed their laptops shut in terror, I'm pretty sure. . . )

Mike L: Man, that New Mutants poster is sort of an "irony" artifact for me. I do believe it came out right before Bill S took over the book-- or very shortly after-- and his visual style rubbed me wrong-way raw. But-- I had the poster, and itself was an interesting piece. That Maestro figure is a BEAUTIFUL toy! It's stunning-- even to a non-collector like me. I had no idea it was a bit of a rarity!

Mike W: Ah, the bookends are a truly beloved Christmas gift from a departed and VERY much missed pal-- one of my favorite items. And yeah-! I'm pretty sure those are exactly the Tarzan books you're thinking of-! I never read past #4, I don't think. Burroughs' writing on the series just did not keep me engaged past #3, really, IIRC. You don't feel like it's really breaking any new ground. Boy, they look good, though!

Thanks so much for the kind and generous responses, folks-- I was certainly having a bit of cyber-stage-fright about tossing all of this out there for perusal, and then hearing crickets chirp in the orchestra pit, y'know?

Til later-
HB





Comicsfan said...

Awesome room, HB. I think all that's missing is one last touch: a velvet rope! (Or is that overkill? :) )

Anonymous said...

Just wanted to say: Dilly dilly!!!

Really enjoyed the peek into your "space". In my neck of the woods, our "basements" are attached to the house and we park our cars in them. Well, that's the theory...

Closer to the coast, the basement is above ground and the house is on stilts!!! What a country...

The Prowler, somewhere in America...

Dr. O said...

I spent several days procrastinating on my dissertation back in 2012 to re-organize and catalog my entire collection (which was less than half its current size back then) using an excel spreadsheet that I now keep updated (a lot easier when you are just doing a dozen books at a time rather than hundreds or even thousands), but if I had to keep a handwritten log of all my books I'd go mad!

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