The Price of Nostalgia: Digital Comics and Ownership

Collecting and archiving have long played important roles in comics cultures. Whether we are talking about status (cultural capital and canonisation), knowledge (histories of comics) or financial value (the sale and resale of comics), it is undeniable that collections and archives, underpinned by the more fundamental principle of ownership, have to a large extent determined what we think comics are, and what they can be. In the digital realm, however, the notion of ownership itself is deeply problematic, and the implications of this for collections and archives are significant. In this presentation, which will focus on the economic and financial aspects of digital comics, I will outline three models of comics ownership that have emerged in the contemporary digital comics market, with references to several major digital comics retailers and publishers, including Comixology, DriveThruComics, Image, Marvel and Rebellion. Each model offers different notions of ownership and access, making these offers more or less explicit depending upon the context, and each distributes risk and power differently. The combination of these elements, and the ways in which these combinations differ from those in more historied economic systems (such as the direct market for printed comics) offer revealing insights into the ways comics culture might change as digital comics continue to develop, and highlight substantial problems that are likely to be faced by collectors and archivists in future.