Fan-Made Comics Archives
Corporate digital comics archives & major academic digital archives have different priorities but one thing in common: they generally cost money, creating barriers to entry. In contrast, fan-made archives are often free, suggesting a democratized alternative. Let’s explore the pros & cons. 1/12
Two of the biggest fan-made digital comics archives are ComicBook+ and the Digital Comics Museum. The sites have a related history, with DCM being founded by refugees from GoldenAgeComics, a UK-based site that surged & floundered before being reborn in its current form as ComicBook+. 2/12
The sites have a similar mission and access model. Both sites assert the right for volunteer members to upload, host, and download digital scans of comic books and strips that have entered the public domain or otherwise become copyright-free, usually due to lapsed publishing rights. 3/12
Per DCM: “All comics on this site have been individually researched by our staff and community members to verify that they are copyright-free & legally in the public domain.” And ComicBook+ has a banner graphic modelled after the Comics Code Seal stating they’ve been “Free & Legal” since 2006. 4/12
Free archives have some obvious advantages over paywalled ones, including the fact they’re accessible to everyone. Conversely, many academic digital archives are only accessible to university employees whose institutions typically pay many thousands of dollars per year to access such archives. 5/12
Most paywalled archives exist, on some level, to create profit. While academic archives also serve the public through knowledge sharing, resource management companies are often more willing to invest in creating archives they feel will make money in the form of more institutional subscriptions. 6/12
These types of financial incentives can affect what gets included in archives. In theory, archives without financial incentives could be more objective. But volunteer archives without a central mission or organizing structure are also subject to the whims and interests of individual users. 7/12
Neither DCM nor ComicBook+ claims to be comprehensive and neither has a specific mission statement. But in both cases, the importance of preservation is implied. For instance, the About page at ComicBook+ marvels at the “amazing fact” that “so many works were forgotten or simply discarded.” 8/12
This impulse toward preservation is also implied by the name of the Digital Comics Museum, and by the general ways in which both DCM and ComicBook+ catalog and present their materials. Both sites use subject tags and include publication and creator info for most of the materials they host. 9/12
Both sites also include search features that clearly advertise archival impulses. ComicBook+ lets users filter search results by publication date, medium, genre/category, title, and publisher. The genre/category filter is particularly archival, evoking common principles of library science. 10/12
The Digital Comics Museum’s search features are more limited, with fewer available filters. While the site does have an “Archives & Collections” tab, definitions are fuzzy; some collections are scans of already-collected material while others are quixotic assemblages created by various users. 11/12
It’s always important to engage archives critically; whether corporate, academic, or fan-made, archives are political projects. But fan-made archives are indisputably an invaluable resource for fans and scholars, preserving art and knowledge in defiance of capitalistic neglect and distortion. 12/12