Bookcases of the Damned (part two of five): Four colours and beyond

Most of the comics I still own are in dark, dry boxes under the bed and beneath the house. A couple of dozen large boxes are stuffed with hundreds and hundreds of individual issues, but all the hardbacks and graphic novels and trade paperbacks live here.

This bookcase was another 40th birthday present, the baby brother of yesterday's leviathan, but now houses nothing but comics. 

Odd gems and massive collections - I can read all the good Charley's War in one go, or indulge in hundreds and hundreds of pages of Eddie Campbell's Alec. The DC Solo book might be my favourite mainstream publication of the 21st century, and was bought in Brisbane for a bargain. 

There's lots and lots of Alan Moore, and a substantial chunk of beloved Marvel that I should probably be more shamed about. Luther Arkwright and Charles Burns and Batman, sharing the shelves. 

There are all my DC Digests tucked up the top, a favourite format that I genuinely find harder to read these days, but they still feel like supreme pop culture artefacts. There's loads and loads of Vertigo, because I'll always be a Vertigo kid.

It's another bookcase that has spilled beyond its borders, with a small space against the wall in the corner, where a substantial stack of Marvel Essential and DC Showcase books have grown, thousands of pages of comics, shoved into the corner. 

There are no comics up on top of this bookcase, just the book club survivors that I haven't given away or pushed onto poor unsuspecting friends.

This is not the biggest bookcase in the house, but there are universes in these shelves, entire histories and continuities. Comics give you so many stories, about all kinds of things, and they're right there, on these shelves heaving with story and art.