Comics in a Digital World

One of the arguments I often hear is that reading comic books is mostly a male hobby, and the 'core' audience for comics is male. Comic book fans are often depicted as socially inept males by mainstream and pop culture media.  You can see examples of this in the Simpson's 'Comic Book Guy' to the main stars of the 'Big Bang Theory'.  To be a comic book fan is to be a male (and almost certainly straight and probably white) according to popular wisdom. This is not unique to comics.  Assuming the main audience is straight, white males is a phenomenon seen in other 'niche' hobbies like video games as well as mass market entertainment like Hollywood movies. Recently many fans online have expressed displeasure and discomfort when they see their favorite publishers or titles 'targeting' a demographic other than this assumed 'core audience' of men.  The argument goes something like: 1. Your loyal audience who has kept you in business for yea...

In 'The Internet of Us', Michael Lynch asks the reader to imagine they were living in a world inside an enormous library that holds a nearly infinite number of books, ranging from incomprehensible babble, to informative explanations of everything from politics to physics to relationships.  The trouble is, there's no way to know which books are accurate or partly accurate and which books are nonsense or entirely made-up. Everyone living inside the library would be in a state of information glut. Sound familiar? He imagines various groups forming, some using reference books as maps to the truths and falsehoods, while other groups insist that no THESE reference books over HERE are the key to understanding the truths of other books, and perhaps some groups insisting there is no way to know which books contain objective truth or that there is no such thing.  The various group's disagreements over which books are accurate and which are falsehoods can't be solved. The gr...

The internet has enabled greater discussion among fan groups, closer ties between creators and fans, and made it much easier for like-minded people to gather and discuss their opinions.  Specialty fan communities that analyze comics through a particular lens have been established. Several sites and social media users have focused on females in comics and fandom. The tumblr for DC Women Kicking Ass describes itself as a place for, "Thoughts, pictures, reviews and other stuff about the women in comics who kick ass This is a feminist site. Deal with it." The Mary Sue has a similar focus, but covers geek culture at large, including movies, video games, comics, and novels. It feels like main-stream comics have become more diverse, both in terms of characters and creators.  I'd like to have concrete numbers to back this up, and I'm searching for them, but they aren't the easiest to find.  It seems that I'm not alone in this feeling, as several groups have form...

Henry Jenkins has this to say about fandom in the book 'Textual Poachers':  “Organized fandom is, perhaps first and foremost, an institution of theory and criticism, a semi-structured space where competing interpretation and evaluations of common texts are proposed, debated, and negotiated and where readers speculate about the nature of the mass media and their own relationship to it.” I generally agree that this process of theory crafting, criticism, and debating/negotiating the relationship fans have with the creators and companies that produce comics is a HUGE part of what the community spends their time and effort on in online spaces. He also says: “This fan views shifts in characterization or format as acts committed against the fans by the producers (unwarranted damage to their common cultural property) and thus as acts warranting a direct personal response.” Which can often make the debate that comic book fans spend so much time on so personal and heated.  Especially no...

We've been talking about different moral economies in class, which essentially refers to people expectations of what is fair. The attitude of 'remix' culture and web 2.0 encourages others to share freely, create and remix new content using someone else's content or framework (like memes) in many cases without even receiving credit. This attitude stands in contrast to the moral economy of the previous media landscape when corporations were the main drivers of content, proper credit (and pay) for content was strongly enforced, and copyright was vigorously enforced.  Finding common ground between these two sides has proved difficult. Marvel Comics has tried to offer a middle ground to fans who want to write their own stories about Marvel characters and properties with Marvel Create Your Own .  It allows anyone to make their own comics by choosing from a variety of pre-rendered Marvel characters, backgrounds, layouts, and effects.  Only a handful of characters can be used...

This blog, I'll take a quick look at how the 6 D's have affected the world of comics and their fans. Demassification (is the breaking up of a system to make it less uniform and more sensitive to the individual needs or interests of those involved in the system) Comic readers have more options than ever, as webcomics have made self publishing much less expensive and opened the market up to a world-wide audience.  Printed comics have also become more diverse, both in terms of who is creating them and the stories that are being told.  I believe social media, which has given a voice to many non-dominant readers, is partial responsible. Decentralization (is the dispersion of powers or processes) The only way to buy lesser know comics (those outside of the top 10 ~20 most popular titles) was to find a local comic book store per-internet. But comics can now be purchased from several sources digitally.  Marvel even has a subscription service that give access to thousands...