If these fucking things can't sit upright on a bookshelf, what use are they? It's bad enough that so many of them use binding made by children as arts and crafts projects...
What is this about binding?! I love my hardcovers...I mean I REALLY love them and for a moment there My gut instinct was to panic due to the potential damage my hardcovers might be doing to themselves from simply existing and being stored upright. Whats worse was that I was powerless to stop them due to a fundamental lack of undrstanding about books.
Then I caught myself on and thought about it a bit more and realised that realistically, in our lifetimes, they arent going to get massively damaged from being stored upright. Books, hardbacked books at that, of often higher value and greater age and some with lesser bindings have been stored for longer periods upright with minimal/negligible damage. Otherwise I/we would have heard of this self destructive plight of the hardcovers
I completely understand that Marvel's omnibus editions (as an example) are beasts with a good weight to their paper stock particularly in the quantities included in them. I agree that there could be some damage to them over extended periods of time, I dont think I will be rushing out to stabilise them with cardboard inserts, but for those that are going that far, for the love of all things comic related go acid free, and while you are at it, it might be inportant to control for light, temperature and humidity. So go on, hermetically seal your library.
Having said that, the really large format books(e.g. Size of DC's Wednesday Comics) are probably best stored flat.
Also interesting site here about storage and handling of books:
http://www.nedcc.org/free-resources...ng/4.1-storage-methods-and-handling-practices
... and then so like normal cats 
