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Chapter 13 - Comics and Their Archives

from Part III - Uses

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 August 2023

By
Benoît Crucifix
Edited by
Maaheen Ahmed
Maaheen Ahmed
Affiliation:
Universiteit Gent, Belgium
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Summary

As popular print ephemera, comics hold a complex and precarious relationship to preservation and duration, which has marked their status as “archivable” (or “non-archivable”) materials. This chapter sketches some of the different ways that institutions, producers, and audiences have coped with this fragility and have defined practices of preservation and collection. The chapter subsequently analyzes comics in libraries and archives, collecting practices by readers and fans, uses of archives in comics production. At each step, it pays particular attention to the importance of materiality, senses, formats, manipulation in the preservation of comics, connecting them to matters of copyright, library policies, and commercial interests. The importance of these parameters is set out against changing notions of archives and archival practice, especially under the impulse of their digital transformation. The broader picture considers the importance of medium specificity in an age of online archival plenitude.

Keywords

archivescollectionscultural memorydocumentmaterialityamateurheritagefandomdrawingintermedialityreproduction
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Companion to Comics , pp. 267 - 286
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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