No more bags and boards: collecting culture and the digital comics marketplace

Abstract

This essay argues that the growth of the electronic sell-through market for digital comics in the United States – represented particularly by the ComiXology service – signals the end of collecting as the organising logic of American comics culture. In the essay’s first section, I trace how collecting had previously come to shape the comic medium and the consumption culture that supported it. Arguing that the existing scholarship on collecting lacks general applicability to the collecting of comics, I introduce a new theory emphasising the repertoire of consumer–good interactions that make up collecting as a practice. In the following section, I describe and analyse the rise of digital comics services and demonstrate how the translation to digital has disabled most of these interactions. Finally, I draw upon scholar Lawrence Lessig’s concept of code to analyse why digital comics have disabled these interactions and what the disappearance of collecting ultimately means for comics culture.