Putting a whole life into storage

None of the comics I've ever owned - and I've had thousands and thousands of the fuckers - have ever gone into long-term storage. The collection has been scattered a couple of times when I've moved between cities, but I was never away from my precious Judge Dredd Megazines for more than a few weeks.

We got a storage unit a couple of years ago to handle the overflow of stuff that no longer fits into our small flat, and it's been useful as hell. Lots of clothes and large pieces of small furniture went in there, and I've now stored a bunch of books and magazines in there - the collection of Empire magazines has been growing since 1993, so that's almost a whole corner of the unit there.

That just meant I could fit more comics under the bed at home, so none of them had to go into the big metal box. I just never knew when I'd get the sudden urge to read Tom Strong comics again, or check in to see if I was remembering that one line of dialogue from Garth Ennis' first Punisher issue correctly. What's the point of owning them if you don't have instant access?

That has been a luxury I have clung to for the past couple of years, but now I have to face facts - almost all of it will have to go into storage for a while.

I'm going to have to put most of my comics into storage for 12 months or so next year, and while I know they'll be safe and okay, I'm genuinely bummed out about it.

Part of it is the paranoia that has been fed by watching far too much Storage Wars, what if I get the payments wrong, or the company fucks up somehow and they sell it all off? Literally a lifetime of collecting, sold off to fuckin' Daryl for $300? I'm going to be 1000 kilometres away, shit like that could just happen.

But it's also that I just like having it around, my own personal library, all at my fingertips. I'm just self-aware enough to recognise how fucking shallow it is to have a personality built on the piles of comics under the bed, but I'm comfortable in those shallows.

I'll still be taking a few books, of course. All the pretty bookshelf stuff, and all the things I always take with me, like the Invisibles, the early 2000ads and the Hitman. Probably Tom Strong, now that I think about it. Combined with the usual avalanche of new books to read, there will be more than enough to keep me going for the year we're planning to be away.

But a storage locker ain't no library. It's a cold place for these vibrant things, that still spark such joy and wonder in me, even if I've read them a hundred times before. That's why I keep them, after all. And that's why I always want to keep them near.