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.)

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.)

Right, but if you think of Publisher as the comic world version of Genre, which it largely is (and my store separates the titles for kids into their own sub-section), then it makes a lot more sense. I often have a hard time finding things in my regular bookstores when I'm not sure which genre section something's going to be shelved in, and it usually takes me longer to track it down there than it does for me to find where the indie comics are kept, and then find the title.

I get why they're separated by publisher, but ultimately I think there's no downside to arranging them alphabetically.

Whereas there's an obvious downside to displaying them sorted by publisher.

there's an obvious downside to displaying them sorted by publisher.

Depends. With "events" like Marvel's Secret Wars (or is it Secret Invasion? Secret something, in any case) or, let's say, DC's Yet Another Crisis, the storyline crosses over into a lot of different titles, some of which might not be -- hell, probably aren't -- on a reader's pull list.

The publisher wants to get people to buy all the crossover titles. And many readers want to buy all the crossover titles, so they can make sense of what's going on. But if you don't *know* that (for instance) Yet Another Crisis is running through Batman, Teen Titans, Superman, and Secret Six, and your only pull out of those 4 titles is Superman, then you'd have to walk up and down the long-ass alphabetically arranged wall of comics from all publishers until you (hopefully) saw whatever splash banner DC came up with to put on covers to promote Yet Another Crisis.

Now, even if comics are arranged by publisher, if you still only have Superman in your pull list, you have to scan all the covers to find the crossovers for Yet Another Crisis, but it's still a lot fewer covers to scan than if you were looking at every single cover from every single publisher.

I realize that my example is more favorable to the publisher than the reader, b/c the publisher *wants* the reader to buy as many titles as they can be conned into buying. But I still maintain my position that a lot of readers want to read all (or most) of the titles in a crossover event, and it's in a publisher's -- and the comic store's -- best interest to make that as easy as possible. It's a win-win-win.

With "events" like Marvel's Secret Wars (or is it Secret Invasion? Secret something, in any case) or, let's say, DC's Yet Another Crisis, the storyline crosses over into a lot of different titles, some of which might not be -- hell, probably aren't -- on a reader's pull list.

Right, so you do a special display like my comic book store did for 52. Or whatever the event of the month is. It's not that difficult to set up the store to cater to both hardcore DC and Marvel fans, and casual interest comic fans being drawn in by a Farscape comic or something that got featured on NPR.

Right, so you do a special display like my comic book store did for 52.

How big is your store? I don't think I've ever gone there, despite all my trips to SF (for which I'm sadly overdue). My store is teeny. There's no way they could make a special display for crossover events, especially when DC and Marvel are both doing one at the same time.