My store is by publisher but I'm rarely in the store for more than five minutes before someone asks me what I'm looking for and they can find anything I want for me in seconds.

In Spidey cartoon news I got my first disc of the 90s series yesterday. I'm enjoying the stories but not the animation. Everyone (especially Peter) is too hunky. It's like a nation of Ken dolls.

I'm rarely in the store for more than five minutes before someone asks me what I'm looking for

Exactly. They enable my lack of knowing how they're organized, and they seem to like the walk-n-talk, so it's all good.

Am I the only one whose store is arranged by title?

I approve of the publisher-oriented filing, since it lets me breeze right past DC's inventory without looking at any of them.

Am I the only one whose store is arranged by title?

Nope. My store arranges by title. New releases on one shelf. More recent releases on another shelf. And then older stuff in boxes and bags.

Not sure how the trades are organized. They keep them behind the counter for some reason.

I don't understand. It's only publisher-oriented to the publishers. Stores don't shelve books by publisher, or CDs by record company, or DVDs by studio. Because that'd obviously be insane. Why make it as difficult as possible for your potential customer to find a title?

I can see what you mean - but I don't think it's like shelving books by publisher, or CDs by label, because the CDs or books in that scenario are not interlocking cogs in a big, messy machine. They're self contained. But that's not the case with comics. What makes sense to me about shelving comics by Publisher is that this means you're closer to shelving them by 'verse. Because so many of (all?) the DC titles are set in the same shared universe, and have characters and contexts and backstory in common, and ditto Marvel for their shared universe(I can't speak for the other publishers though). And if you're a total newbie, that's actually quite helpful, surely? To know that all the books in this section are liable to relate to one another?

I mean, I'm not denying that it's an imperfect scheme, but I don't think it's crazy.

It's helpful only if you're a newbie who's into DC or Marvel superhero comics. If you're a newbie (or infrequent comics reader) looking for something else and don't happen to know the name of the publisher, it's unbelievably confusing.

(And speaking of RASL upthread, I would love to discuss the 3rd issue, but I got 2 pages in and realized I needed to reread the first 2 because I have no idea what's happening. This is why I prefer trades.)

Exactly. I don't read superhero books much. And when I do, it's almost always because of the author. Reading NextWave is not going to get me to care about the X-Men, so shelving them near each other doesn't do anything for me.

And it is done that way with other publishers. Casanova and Phonogram aren't part of a shared universe* but they're both Image books, so they'll often be shelved together.

*Although if they were, that would be a particularly awesome universe.

If you're a newbie (or infrequent comics reader) looking for something else and don't happen to know the name of the publisher, it's unbelievably confusing.

When Fray got me back into comics, I also started buying Ultimate Spider-Man (my Batman -- and Blue Beetle -- obession started much later). And I couldn't figure out why the comics were separate the way they were (i.e., not alphabetically by title).

But honestly, it didn't take me more than 1 visit to the store to figure out they were separated by publisher. The publisher's logos are pretty prominent on the covers, so even though I often miss the obvious, I twigged to it pretty easily.

I'm not implying that everyone should figure it out that quickly -- obviously, not everyone does -- but I still don't think it's all that weird to separate the books by publisher. Fay's point about the (more-or-less) shared universes is a good one.

But honestly, it didn't take me more than 1 visit to the store to figure out they were separated by publisher.

This isn't the confusing part. It's having to remember who the damn publisher is in the first place. (Which isn't ever necessary in any other kind of bookstore.)