Send Us Your Shelf Porn!

Welcome once again to Shelf Porn, where we get to play voyeur every week with somebody’s comic collection. This week’s contribution comes from Van Jensen, writer of Pinocchio Vampire Slayer and its upcoming sequel, as he shows us where the nose-growing, vampire-slaying magic happens.

Without further ado, let’s hear from Van …

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First, an admission: For a comic book guy, I don’t have a very ostentatious assemblage of comics stuff. Especially compared to some of the insane collections highlighted in the past few weeks, this isn’t going to be very pornographic at all, like maybe worthy of a single X at best. Warning in place, let’s start the tour in my office, where I do most of my writing.

This is my main comics/graphic novels shelf. The top row is DC/Vertigo, heavy on the hardcover collections (just picked up Ditko’s Creeper!) and trades of Y the Last Man. The next two shelves below that are a mix of mainstream, indie and foreign books (I’m just about through Pluto, finally). Below that are Alan Moore books and art/drawing guides. Then the bottom shelf is mostly references like the Marvel/DC/Vertigo encyclopedias and then comic strips.

Here are bookcases two and three. I just pulled a bunch of books to donate, thus the empty rows. Not a whole lot of comics here, except…

When we moved into our new place, my wife said, “Why don’t you put all of your Top Shelf books on the top shelf?” Done and done.

Here’s bookcase four. The boxing nun has been following me since I was in grade school. She still has a good right arm, but her left is shot. Up top are my oversized collections: the bound copies of my college newspaper from when I was editor, an atlas (always useful), the Wednesday Comics collection and Kramers Ergot 7. Those last two are well worth owning, even if there’s nowhere reasonable to store them.

Here’s my writing desk. You might be able to spot a few details like the two long boxes stashed under the table, a random pheasant feather and a comics script on my computer screen. What script? Wouldn’t you like to know.

My desk is usually pretty clean, but I had to put out some recent acquisitions. The card is a robot Pinocchio by J Chris Campbell. The fossils I found while fossil hunting with my dad in Utah earlier this year. The little one is a spiral shell, and the larger one is a section of a much larger spiral shell.

Here’s my drawing desk. At the moment I’m finishing up a big splash page of Beta Ray Bill fighting Loki (a just for fun project).

I had toys when I was a kid but never got into collecting them as an adult. The little green guy is a reconstituted action figure made out of random parts of toys I’ve found over the years. The body is from a Power Ranger, I think. I have no idea about the guns, head or legs, though. The polar bear Pez dispenser is from a friend and fellow Lost fan. The wooden guy is holding these Spider-Man finger puppets I found in Florida. I’m 100 percent certain they’re in violation of Marvel’s trademarks.

Sometimes Pinocchio’s wooden head resides on the drawing desk. Mostly when I want to creep myself out. Behind him is a little Superman bust that an old newspaper friend gave me.

I don’t have any comics art up on the walls, but I do have a few original paintings. This one is by my mom. The forlorn clown in the middle is actually me, back from when I was a kid and somebody started up a “clown club” in my hometown. Let’s just move on, or I’m going to start having nightmares again.

My first day as editor of the college paper, I snagged a negative of the front page of the paper. When the sun’s out, it shows up really well in the window and is a cool little reminder of a very fun year.

And that’s the tour. Time for me to get back to work on Pinocchio, Vampire Slayer 3.