Originally Posted by
Blunt Guy
I have my collection in alphabetical order, mostly by the actual title name, but I have some by character. The frequent #1's across the board are a pain in the ass for me, simply because it seems like I'm always adding new divider tabs. I'll use Amazing Spider-Man as an example since it's a popular title and hasn't reached double digit relaunches yet. Volume 1 ran from 1963-1998 for 441 issues. The first relaunch was in 1998, went from 1-58, then to legacy numbering at 500, and ran until 2013 and #700. After that, the whole series changed to Superior Spider-Man for 31 issues, and in 2014, we got our third ASM #1. Vol 3 ran for 20 issues until 2015, when ASM #1 number four was released (with the same writer) and went 32 issues. At this point, issue 800 was getting close, so Vol 5 was started with #789, and ran to 801. So her we are in 2018, with the 5th ASM #1 (the third since 2014) officially known as volume 6. For a reader who doesn't know this info, the look of the 3 recent relaunches is similar enough that they would have difficulty matching the right issues together in a back issue bin. New readers don't know that all the info is in the indica, so it would be easy to pick up issues 4, 5, & 6 of three different volumes. It happens, and will only get worse with every new #1. ASM isn't even a clusterfuck compared to Iron Man and a few other titles. Only a fool would think this is healthy for the long term. Before long, every collector will need a guide to keep track of what is what.