McCloud notes that multimedia CD-ROMs in the early 1990s such as The Complete Maus by Art Spiegelman experimented with taking comics beyond print. Nevertheless, electronic comic books have existed for a number of years. In a way, the comic book store is a site for culture as well as commerce.” So, for many comic book readers and collectors, the idea that a comic book can exist other than in print may be difficult to accept. Pustz that involves more than just a commercial transaction: “many regulars find that the real reason for patronizing these establishments is interaction with the people there, including other customers and employees. However, when the production process is complete, the result is usually a printed comic book, sold typically in a comic book store in a process described by Matthew J. Indeed, before a comic is printed, it may only exist in completed form-written, drawn, inked, colored, lettered, and so forth-as an electronic file. Though the production process of comic books has varied over the years, today computers are often used at some stage, as Scott McCloud recognized back in 2000 in Reinventing Comics. “For many comic book readers and collectors, the idea that a comic book can exist other than in print may be difficult to accept.” What happens to the comic book collecting hobby and the comics industry, both traditionally based in print, as they begin to mutate in the digital age? This article explores such questions. But is the disc or the electronic files it holds a comic book collection? The disc certainly does not have the weight of the printed comics, but does it have at least the significance? With the advent of DVD-ROMs collecting decades of such titles as The Amazing Spider-Man and The Fantastic Four on a single disc, comic book collectors and general readers may be more and more tempted to read on screen in the future. Now a comic book collection of, say, The Avengers, that once filled a box can weigh under an ounce, ensconced on a slim computer disc, the disc itself perhaps soon to be discarded as a vehicle in favor of files encoded magnetically on a computer in one location and downloaded to another over the Internet. The material aspect of comics has been revealed to be a mere vehicle of the art form. But with the development of electronic publishing, the automatic association of comic books with print has been challenged. Thus, most of the social practices of comic book collecting have been based around the materiality of comic books. Even if a collector orders an issue online through eBay or elsewhere, the issue still must be packaged and transported physically to the collector.
Comic collector search missing issues series#
In addition to the material nature of the books themselves, comic book collecting often affects the collectors physically, as putting together a collection, if one didn’t buy the series from when it was first published, can involve years of visits to flea markets, garage sales, used bookstores, comic conventions, and comic book stores, among other places, in order to find all the issues of the series one is collecting. Individually, the typical printed comic book-say an issue of The Flash-can seem insubstantial, but a monthly accumulation of Flash issues over a number of years can fill a box, and a comic book collection of many titles can fill a room and beyond as it grows.Ĭonsequently, anyone who collects comic books has to deal with this factor of materiality, emphasized further by collected comics often being bagged and boarded for preservation purposes, and classified according to grades of physical condition from mint to poor for commercial or trade purposes.
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As a result, I, or anyone else who has ever moved a comic book collection, especially a sizable one, can testify to its material presence, particularly its weight.
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Helping a friend move, I once filled up the back of a pickup truck with comic books. This paper explores the possible consequences for the comic book collecting hobby and the comics industry as a subculture traditionally based in print begins to mutate in the digital age. With the advent of DVD-ROMs published by Graphic Imaging Technology and other companies collecting decades of such titles as The Amazing Spider-Man and The Fantastic Four on a single DVD, comic book collectors and general readers may be more and more tempted to read on screen in the future. Once a quest that often took years of visits to flea markets, garage sales, used bookstores, and the local comics shop, collecting an entire run of a comic book title may become as easy as downloading a file from the Internet.