Comic Cuts — 16 December 2022

I've spent the week surrounded by boxes of a variety of shapes and sizes. Some very heavy ones, like those containing Look and Learn and Treasure, pictured above, have now gone to live in a cubby hole under the stairs, and others are still dotted around the living room as I sort out what I can get rid of and what I want to keep.

That has been my main job for this week. I did some quick sales through Facebook, which has resulted in getting rid of five boxes of magazines — a grand total of 246 as of Thursday evening. That's them over on the right, ready for collection some time today (Friday).

I finally gave up on finding a home for some of the magazines, so 219 more have been consigned to the paper collection, with another 49 almost certainly heading the same way unless I can think of a suitable home in the next couple of weeks.

Just as I'm getting into the swing of things — scanning covers, posting sales or auctions up on Facebook, keeping up to date with questions about them and making sure that offers are responded to promptly — Christmas turns up. Not that it was unexpected, but I had hoped that I would be doing this back in November. Now everything will have to go on hold: the postal service is going to be patchy until the new year, and I don't want to risk smaller packets going astray; and I need to tidy up the living room so we can enjoy Christmas without tripping over boxes and piles of magazines. There are piles of books on the table... not that it matters because there are piles of books on the chairs, too, as well as magazines tucked under the chairs, and boxes tucked under the table. I need to shuffle everything around in such a way that I don't lose track of anything.

I mentioned last week that I was trying to put together a bibliography of the books that I'd worked on. This has taken a lot longer than I expected, because the books, and information on them, is scattered all over the place. I'm trying to figure out where the hell I've squirreled away some of them. I was missing four booklets that I did for Norman Wright last week, only to stumble across them mixed up with some Old Boys Books reference material, but I'm still missing some of my paperback checklists.

Even I'm amazed that there will be nearly 150 books and chapbooks listed once I get everything in place. Should make for an interesting cover gallery... eventually. I'm hoping to have it done in time for the 40th anniversary of my first article appearing in print in January. Time, I think, to get back to it.