Last weekend, I used a borrowed digital camera and took pictures of my many bookcases full of graphic novels. As I wandered through the house gathering photographic evidence of thousands of hours passed with sequential art in my hands, I was struck by how similar my house has truly begun to resemble a library. (This doesn’t surprise me much- that is my day job, after all.) Past that, I was suddenly gripped by a far more intriguing question: what the hell is going to happen to these books once I’m gone? The easy thing to believe is that they’d go to my ex and my youngest step-daughter. But I know they don’t have room for 2000+ graphic novels (not to mention eleven long boxes full of floppies). They might want some of them, but all of them? No way. My mother? She’s got health problems of her own and no place to put them. Plus, she’s 1800 miles away. No chance in hell she pays to have those shipped that way. Not voluntarily, at least. A local library? Maybe. But as someone that checks out the occasional book from his local public library, I get tired of reading through a book only to come to pages that have been torn out. Perhaps an archival collection at the library? “The Marc Mason Collection.” Maybe. But on the flip side, those types of books have to be read in-house. Comics are best read in a comfy chair or while laying on the couch. Do I contradict myself? I contain multitudes. What can I say? Ultimately, I think I’m going to have to come up with a better plan and put pieces into place to execute it. I’m already at the age where it’s more imperative that I set things up legally in case of my untimely demise. Now it’s clear to me that I will need to make legal arrangements for the comics and graphic novels, much as I have with my home insurance. How many of you have thought about this? How many of you have a plan in place to deal with your collections? Has anyone else made legal arrangements for the handling of the hobby you spent your life pursuing? I think I have an idea for how I’d like things to work, but I’m going to have to run it by the beneficiary first. Maybe he’ll see the wisdom in my request. Or maybe he’ll say no. Or, maybe, just maybe, I’ll say “fuck it” and instead of being cremated, I’ll arrange to have every graphic novel and comic placed on a boat, have my body piled on top, and be pushed out to sea in a Viking funeral, burning away in a four-color blaze of glory. Heh. I kinda like that. Maybe I’m onto something with that one.
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