Blog

At long last, friends, the Comic Cave has taken shape!

Last month, we finally moved into the house and since then, we’ve been spending our spare time unpacking boxes. In the midst of the move, the Apple iPad was released and I realized that once Marvel starts releasing new comics in digital form, I will buy an iPad and become a digital comic reader for this simple reason: I am so darn sick of moving these long boxes. I’m also tired of reorganizing them. Those of you with a million long boxes, I pray you never have to move them. While I love these books with all my heart, I will welcome the digital comic age with open arms. I liken it to moving our 300+ pound cedar chest of CDs and how the same amount of music fits onto my iPod. But I digress.

Let’s get to what you all are really here to see. Without further ado, here is the room with all the furniture arranged:

First of all, I have a desk with my favorite desk chair. In this picture, I have my Macbook sitting on it, although I rarely use my Macbook there. I have actually been using my desk to rediscover my love of drawing. I haven’t drawn regularly in a long time, since I have not really had a place to do so. Now that I do, I have no excuse. My accumulated sketch pads are all over the place. I have a few pieces of work that I drew a long time ago that I rediscovered, that I might hang. One is a piece that I won a prize with in high school. I can’t believe it’s survived as well as it has in all these moves.

Next is my guitar and music stand. The guitar is my old Alvarez, which is my first guitar. I have a Taylor which I play at church. But this one is just to fool around with and continue to learn more on. I’m not the best guitarist, but I love to mess around. The guitar stand is an antique a parishioner at church gave me. It needed some work, but it’s actually a nice piece of furniture.

In between the desk and the music stand, I put one of our old living room end tables with our old, small TV on it. I set up my PlayStation 2 and my Nintendo 64 on it because every now and then, I like to play some video games. I’m not a big gamer, but, like with the guitar, I like to mess around. Last weekend, I went to a book sale and found a stack of PS2 games including a James Bond game, a Harry Potter game, some racing games, an NBA Street game, and an MLB game. I’m liking the NBA game a lot. My kids have enjoyed watching DVDs up there too, so in the end table, I have a collection of DVDs stored.

Here is my “reading nook.” I have the chair and ottoman, along with another end table next to it. It’s full of catch-all things like old cassette tapes and computer equipment. On top are the books I’m currently reading. One stack is my theological reading, and of course the most important is the stack of graphic novels. I’m currently reading Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud, and New Mutants Classic Volume 4 by Chris Claremont and Bill Sienkiewicz. You’ll also notice my long boxes. I have one short box full of new comics, which I reread when new comics come out, but the other long boxes are empty. That’s because I did something different with my books until I can afford to get some drawer boxes.

My wife found these two bookshelves at a local Goodwill store for $20 each. You can’t tell, but they’re pretty deep. My collection of a few thousand books all fits on here. I put them on the shelf facing outward for two reasons. One, because I wanted to see how comparable this solution would be to drawer boxes. Unfortunately, it’s pretty difficult to get to comics in the back this way, but I don’t do that very often. Secondly, I wanted to display some of the cover artwork. Some of my favorite covers and artists are represented here, from a reprint of Ditko’s classic Amazing Fantasy #15 to Art Adams on Classic X-Men, from Steve McNiven’s Old Man Logan to lots of Joe Madureira covers from various X-books. This is definitely not the long-term solution, but for now it works, so long as I can keep my 1-year-old from taking issues off the shelf.

So I’m pretty comfy in my room thus far. I don’t have to be at the church all the time for work, so today I found myself working on stuff almost all day. It has been a great place for me to do all of my favorite things. I have had to make sure I spend some time with my family every once in a while, though.

I realized that this is the first time I’ve had a room for myself since I was in high school. And not surprisingly, this room resembles my high school room with art table, comics, and music. Just replace the comfy chair with my parents’ old nasty couch, and it would be an exact replica.

Next on the agenda is getting things on the wall. In the next Comic Cave Makeover, I’ll show you what I’ve done.

Jeff Jackson
jeff@comicattack.net