What’s Yours Is Mine, Part 1

It’s an old maxim in the comic industry that “every issue is somebody’s first” and, while it was aimed at writers and editors to ensure that all of the ongoing characters and plot points were clearly delineated in each issue, it can easily be turned around to fandom. Every comic book fan has an “origin story” about how they first came to love comic books, and most of them start with different comics. Something about the comic appealed to them at an emotional level and convinced them to pick up the next issue. It might have been the art or the writing or the colors. Maybe they identified with a particular character or the storyline really resonated with them. It doesn’t seem like a wild exaggeration to suggest that there are as many comic fans’ origins as there are comic book fans. Even a small sampling of stories starts to illuminate how different they are...

I had only read comics casually, and never saved them, until, when I was in junior high school, I was bored, and picked up a copy of Daredevil #120 at the Colonial Pharmacy... And this comic book showed me this whole sprawling universe, not just one where the characters had adventures from month to month, but one where previous issues actually mattered to the new stories—and where previous events on completely different series even mattered. I wanted to know more. I wanted the next issue, I wanted to find these SHIELD stories, I wanted past issues of Daredevil... I wanted to find out what I’d been missing out on... The story led me to the world, and exploring the world of the Marvel Universe led me to fall in love with the form.
—Kurt Busiek, personal communication

My father and comics were inextricably joined in my mind, Teen Titans and The Avengers forever linked to the interior of my dad’s broken-down old Dodge... Dad would drive me to the park, we’d shoot baskets or run the track, buy a stack of comics, and then head for the Baskin-Robbins. He’d park the car and we’d read comics side-by-side, scooping out our ices with little wooden paddles. There we would carry on long conversations about who was stronger, Superman or the Hulk, who was better, Superman or Spider-Man, what comics were funner, DC or Marvel.
—Valerie D’Orazio, Memoirs of an Occasional Superheroine

When Secret Wars came out, my mother bought me a Captain America figure (have no idea why) and I really dug his outfit. Then my friend was going to get comics and offered to buy me some, so I picked Captain America. Years later, around 14, I went to my first comic shop and tried to find the continuation of that Cap story. I did and I’ve been collecting comics ever since. That’s when I discovered Cap was a scrawny kid who wanted to do things his body just wouldn’t [let] him. I identified with that and wished there was a super-soldier serum for me.
—Michael Kaiser, personal communication

Superman Annual #1 is the first comic book that I remember picking out for myself. The ones I’d seen before hadn’t made any particular impression on me. Maybe it’s the four-square-and-solid look of this cover, with the heavily-mustered frame of Superman facing directly forward, bursting a chain by expanding his chest... This is clearly a special comic book.
—Bill Schelly, Sense of Wonder

By about age five, I had acquired some Justice League of Americas... but the first Marvel book that lit a fire under me would have been an X-Men in the twenties. I remember as a seven-year-old developing a crush on Jean Grey. What struck me about Marvel at the time was that subplots in one story carried over into the next issue. This was unheard of from my limited exposure to DC at the time. That led me to care about the characters.
—Russ Chappell, personal communication

For the record, Superman Annual #1 was released in 1960, the X-Men issues cited mostly were printed in 1966, Daredevil #120 is cover-dated April 1975, the Teen Titans title referenced debuted in 1980 and Secret Wars ran from 1984-1985. Regardless of the age or generation, comic book readers became comic book fans through an emotional involvement in or around the medium. Irrespective of the specifics, each reader finds something in the comic book compelling. That’s why they become fans of the medium, after all: there’s something inherent with the comics they read that speaks to them and makes them feel good. Which again hearkens back to the self-esteem issues from the previous chapters. People like to feel good and, for many, comics help to facilitate that.

Though certainly not to the same extremes that Dr. Harry Harlow’s experiments went, comics can be comforting and reassuring. Harlow’s tests with rhesus monkeys are well-known and covered in many psychology textbooks; he used wire-frame and cloth-covered mother surrogates to show that a child’s emotional attachment to his or her mother does not stem from the nourishment she provides, but the love and affection that accompanies it. What Harlow also proved—though this was not his intent—was that we can form deep emotional attachments to inanimate objects. His rhesus monkey subjects behaved around a cloth-covered fake mother in much the same way they would behave around their real mothers; it provided a sense of comfort and security to the young monkeys when they were confronted with strange and frightening situations.

While it would likely be considered laughable that someone could substitute a comic book for their mother, an emotional attachment to figures drawn on a page can still occur. Fans invest themselves emotionally in the creators and characters they enjoy and, over an extended period of time, that investment begins to demand a more active involvement. Not necessarily in the sense of participation and ongoing engagement with fandom, as I’ll discuss in the next chapter, but in the sense that a fan’s favorite comics are thought about more consciously.

In reading a comic that doesn’t resonate with you, it’s not terribly difficult to recall the basic exposition that occurs in it. (For the sake of readability, I’m going to proceed using only narrative comics as a theoretical example. The same ideas would apply to non-narrative works, but the additional verbiage to include them becomes very cumbersome for the reader.) Details might be sketchy, but the basic plot and structure would be memorable enough, but not much else. In other words, the basic factual elements of the comic. In reading a comic that does strike you, you’re likely going to be a more active reader and start thinking about elements beyond the basic story itself. You might speculate about character motivations or mentally extrapolate on plot points that weren’t sufficiently addressed. You might think about alternate endings or future installments of the story. Perhaps you imagine entirely new stories based on the same ideas and premises.

Mashall McLuhan considered this type of behavior almost inherent within comics. In Understanding Media, McLuhan described what he called “hot” and “cool” media. A hot medium was one in which a great deal of information for at least one of the senses was conveyed—“high definition” was the phrase he used. A cool medium was one in which only a comparatively modest amount of information is transmitted, forcing the audience member to fill in a lot of it themselves. With comics, readers are more frequently called to question what they are about. “Any hot medium allows of less participation than a cool one, as a lecture makes for less participation than a seminar, and a book for less than dialogue.”

Which speaks to his central theme of Understanding Media, and the line for which McLuhan is most famous: the medium is the message.

What he meant by that, as it pertains to comics, was that a comic book reader has to work out a great deal of the comic book story for her- or himself. Each panel is a frozen moment in time and it is up to the reader to deduce how the story progresses between one panel and the next. Scott McCloud discussed this idea at length in Understanding Comics, calling the idea of filling in the gutter space between panels a form of closure. This process actively engages the reader throughout the entire story and forces him or her to derive meaning from the work. Following McLuhan’s theory, the medium of comics is all about creating one’s own story from the snippets of information provided throughout a comic book.

The story in any given comic book, then, is incomplete until someone picks it up, reads it and develops their own story from it. The medium is the message.

To clarify, this isn’t to say that the story is complete for everyone as soon as someone reads it. Every story is incomplete for each individual until that individual reads and decodes it for him- or herself. Captain Victory and the Galactic Rangers #8 is a complete story for me personally because I have read it; if you have not read it yourself, it remains incomplete for you. I have read through the issue, taken what information was in the book and processed it, assigning some meaning to it based on my own experiences and background. For anyone who has not done that, the issue remains elusive.

Fans vs. Collectors vs. Nostalgics, Part 2

All of these factors tied together and prompted the idea that publishers could design comics to be collectible, thereby tapping into some of the after-market funds by creating an immediate demand, as opposed to the delayed one that generally drove the collectibles market. Early publisher gimmicks were simple, such as heavily promoting first issues or “significant” events, but there were enough comic fans that tried to cash in on the speculator market that publishers noticed sales spikes on those issues. By the early 1990s, they were promoting variant covers and pre-polybagged issues as well as heavily marketing “event” comics to mainstream media outlets. All of which encouraged a collector mentality among fans as well as non-fans eager to tap into a booming economic market.

In recent years, however, the comic collector looking for economic gains has dwindled. In the first place, the aforementioned speculator market burst in the mid-1990s, forcing many people who had tried collecting allegedly rare and unique comics to sell them for a fraction of what they paid for them. Though some believe the number of those individuals is comparatively small.

They actually thought all the comics they were printing were selling to eager fans, when in fact, I estimate that at least 30% of all the comics being published from 1990-1994 ended up as overstock in comics dealers inventories.
—Chuck Rozanski, Tales from the Database

In the second place, readers don’t need to be collectors the way they used to be. When Byrne was looking for old Fantastic Four stories, he had no alternative but to seek out the original issues in which they were printed. New issues rarely contained reprint material and when they did, often it was haphazard. Readers couldn’t necessarily count on the next reprint issue containing the story that immediately followed the currently reprinted one. Publishers, though, have paid more attention to that reprint market recently, providing a variety of ways someone can engage the same story. That same issue Byrne bought from the barber has been reprinted at least 15 different times, several versions of which have remained in print for years and some are available digitally. The need for a fan to act as a collector is no longer present, by and large, as they can still partake of their favorite stories without involving themselves with the preciousness of rare objects like fifty year old comic books. Which is not to say that there aren’t comic collectors any longer.

When I first started, my goal was to get complete sets of Avengers, Captain America and Thor. I completed my set of Avengers last year, I’m one issue away from a complete set of Thor and three issues away from having the entire run of Captain America. Once I finish completing those, I’m going to try to finish my JLA set.
—Mike Berry, personal communication

Clearly, any number of old comics are sold every day both online and in physical retail locations. A large portion of comic conventions is devoted to retailers selling these paper artifacts. Some of these individuals might be completists, looking to acquire an entire run of a particular title or perhaps every appearance of a certain character. In cases such as these, though, psychologists have yet to define a clear cause for this behavior despite generations of examinations.

Some have likened the process to the hunter-gatherer mentality of pre-historic man, but this does not account for the fact that pre-historic man’s gathering was more immediate and fleeting (i.e. they gathered berries and ate them soon afterwards) nor that not everyone collects. Others have made comparisons to various mental disorders; Maggie Thompson once jokingly suggested to me that everyone at a comic convention had Asperger’s syndrome. But research so far has been far from conclusive, as collectors tend to have few traits in common with patients known to have obsessive-compulsive disorder, which many presume is a higher order of the hoarder mind-set, itself believed to be a higher order of the collecting one. There has been some speculation that collecting is somehow genetic, and researchers have found some casual evidence that a “collecting gene” tends to run in families. But here again, scientists have found little to form any substantive theories yet. We are left with the idea that some people do have a strong desire to collect things, and some of those people collect comics, but little else can be concretely said on the topic.

Nostalgia can, of course, play in to the reasoning behind purchasing comics. It’s not uncommon for adults to long for earlier times that they have mentally given a whitewashing, pushing back any negative memories and emotions to only recall the “good ol’ days.” As I’ll elaborate on in the next chapter, comics are often tied to strong emotions, thus making the recollections of them more desirable. Those memories can be enhanced or recalled more easily with the aid of objects from the period in time the individual yearns for, and comics’ iconic images are ideal triggers. The comics remind them of a time when they were able to enjoy the simple pleasure of reading without the responsibilities that come with adulthood.

Here I was pushing thirty, and thinking to myself, “Why not have the things I enjoyed when I was ten?” So the bug bit me, and I began collecting all over again.
—Bill Thailing, The Golden Age of Comic Fandom

Some fans indeed continue buying new comics in an attempt to recapture that very feeling. “If reading Action Comics made me feel happy twenty years ago, reading Action Comics now should illicit a similar reaction.” It’s not a bad premise on first glance; however, the changes in the creative team of the comic over that time and the experiences a reader has that inevitably impact her or his thinking will almost inevitably result in that same feeling not being recaptured. Those changes, though, often aren’t that perceptible because the comics are often purchased on a month-to-month basis. Creative team changes are generally not done across the board (even if the writer and artist are replaced, the editor is not) and few people have significant life events each and every month. So the premise is actually more akin to “If reading Action Comics made me feel happy last month, reading Action Comics this month should illicit a similar reaction.” It is only when this process is carried out over years or even decades that it becomes less and less feasible. But the emotional connection with the characters remains important, and I’ll discuss how that plays out in the next chapter.

Fans vs. Collectors vs. Nostalgics, Part 1

In common usage, comic book fans are often called comic book collectors. Indeed, many fans have accumulated large collections of comics over the years and even refer to themselves as collectors. Not infrequently, they are, but I feel that there is a distinction between fans and collectors that needs to be made and addressed.

Comics have, almost since their inception, had a temporal quality to them. Not only do they reflect the times in which they were created, but the very physical objects themselves were embedded with a certain transience. For generations, comics were printed on the poorest paper stock available, often using the cheapest printing techniques. They cost readers very little money to purchase and they were disposed of soon afterwards. Many people were perfectly content with that because, after all, a new installment would be out soon enough with all new stories. (In the case of comic books, this was generally monthly or bimonthly; in the case of comic strips, it was daily.)

Since comics were considered a disposable medium, it should come as no surprise that few people saved them. Those that remained interested in the individual comics after subsequent issues were published were left scrambling to find any issues they might have missed due to spotty distribution.

Issue two I found in the local barbershop. It took me three days to work up the nerve to ask the barber to sell it to me. I was willing to offer him cover-price for the slightly dilapidated copy. He gave it to me for free...
—John Byrne, The Fantastic Four Chronicles

But frequently, these quests were driven by an interest in simply reading more about the characters than an innate desire to have every issue. There were very few stories about any given comic character since they simply had not been around very long. Though it may be difficult to put into perspective here in the 21st century, when discussions about popular characters falling into the public domain by virtue of how long they’ve been around is not at all unheard of, the volume of comic book stories back then was not nearly as great. The above quote from Byrne refers to a time when there were less than a dozen issues of The Fantastic Four in existence; by acquiring that single issue, Byrne went from having half of all the FF stories ever made to having two-thirds of them. He was clearly enjoying the characters’ exploits and just wanted to see what other incredible adventures they might have.

This is a relevant point since the fans, over time, will naturally accumulate an increasing number of individual comics. The periodical nature of many comics meant than new installments were constantly being published, and readers would soon accumulate stacks of comics just by their virtue of not disposing of them. Fans would hang on to older issues for their entertainment value; a good issue of Daredevil will remain a good issue of Daredevil no matter how often you read it. This is where the distinction needs to be made between a comic fan and a comic collector.

We don’t call someone who buys lots of books a book collector—not unless they buy first editions, or other rarities. If they just buy books to read and keep them to reread, we call them an avid reader with a big library. That’s me—both with comics and with books. I buy ‘em to read them. I keep them to read them again. I have a lot of them because I’ve been doing this for almost thirty years.
—Kurt Busiek, personal communication

A collector, by contrast to an avid reader, would be someone whose interest lies more in the acquisition itself, rather than the entertainment value derived from any given comic. They are more interested in either the “thrill of the hunt” or simply using their collection as a form of capital, either cultural or economic. While the hunters and cultural capitalists have been around, in some fashion, since the dawn of comic book collecting, the economic viability of a comic book collector is comparatively recent.

While comic fans were almost always willing to pay more than the original cover price for comics they felt were rare and valuable, it wasn’t until the mid-1960s when anyone really took serious note of it. Articles began appearing The New York Times, The New Yorker, Time, Newsweek and the like noting that some people were willing to pay several dollars apiece for old comics that had originally cost ten cents. A 1965 piece in Newsday pointed out that “in exceptional cases, where a single book is needed to complete a collection, members have paid as much as $100.” Not surprisingly, this spurred an after-market economy, where fans and collectors would try to make money reselling comics they had bought from traditional retail outlets like newsstands.

We were speculating on stuff back then. We’d go around and grab stuff off the racks, get eight or ten. And then every once in a while, something really good came out. We’d drive up to Delowers in Oakland and they’d have a pile of, like, 200 of them. I remember we did that with House of Mystery 185 with the first Williamson.
—Dick Swan, unpublished interview with Tim Stroup

The increased attention led to more and more people using comics as a means of economic capital. Price guides were becoming common with Bob Overstreet providing the most comprehensive version. This all led to specialized comic book shops opening and, eventually, the direct market distribution system. The direct market was originally established to provide a faster and more reliable comic distribution network but it also proved to help facilitate a closed system which would allow publishers to have more control over the comics they produced. They had direct communication with the retailers and were able to utilize that to better promote new comics and storylines; they had more accurate sales data; and they didn’t end up having to pulp stacks of comics that were returned to them from newsstands.

Promoted from Captain Marvel to Major Victory, Part 2

The end of the previous chapter touched on the different roles fans can play. These roles have some significance in how fans are compared to one another as far as their cultural capital is concerned. A child idly reading a Wonder Woman comic isn’t going to be compared to an editor of DC Comics. Fans who have been reading comics for fifty years are put in a different classification than retailers. Their roles within comicdom are such that put them in contact with widely different sets of data and information which are, by and large, not privy to other roles. An editor, of course, would know about line-wide sales numbers whereas a retailer would have access to local trends. An older fan is expected to know more simply by the longevity they’ve had within fandom and newcomers are understood to be in the process of learning the basics. Each role, however it’s defined by fandom at large, has a different set of expectations that accompany it—a prototype of sorts—that allows individual fans to be assessed within a comparatively homogeneous group. This has the effect of more firmly establishing tiers within fandom, but simultaneously leveling each of those tiers so everyone is gauged against a fair baseline.

Not surprisingly, this doesn’t work quite so idyllically in practice.

Part of the reason for being in fandom, indeed any group, is to enhance one’s self-esteem. While this can be, and is often, accomplished through the external positive reinforcement of valued characteristics, it can also be internally supported by demeaning others’. That is, while other fans can provide encouragement or advice, some choose to belittle others in order to make themselves appear better than they are. It’s a relatively well-worn mechanism for coping with low self-esteem to bring down those around you in order to feel superior to them, and it would be foolish to think that comicdom is immune from such tactics.

The Simpsons’ own Comic Book Guy is an easy, albeit exaggerated, example. He regularly and casually dismisses all opinions that aren’t in line with his own; he always talks down to his customers, especially those who don’t immediately appear to have a purchase in mind; he continually makes comic book references regardless of their appropriateness for his audience in an effort to showcase his knowledge of the medium; a large proportion of his dialogue, certainly most of what is said to other characters, is sarcastic. Nearly all of his conversations with other characters involve his attempting to demean them in some fashion, and he’s shown very few positive character traits over the years.

I can’t tell you how many times people have come up to me and said, ‘I know who you based that comic book guy on. It’s that comic-book guy right down the block.’ And I have to tell them, ‘No, it’s every comic-bookstore guy in America.
—Matt Groening, TV Guide

The extreme exaggeration, both in the Comic Book Guy character and Groening’s comment, is where the humor stems from, of course. But the idea of a comic book fan trying to lord his or her cultural capital to both those in decidedly different roles and altogether unrelated outgroups is not unheard of. This type of behavior suggests that the individual is either unwilling or unable to distinguish the differences in value systems between her or his own tribe and role, and those of others. The stereotype that’s arisen from this bears some superficial similarities to the stereotype for someone with Asperger’s syndrome, notably with regards to social interactions. While it’s almost certain that some comic book fans do indeed suffer from Asperger’s, that particular stereotype of comic book fans is one that has largely fallen by the wayside, not coincidentally alongside a broader acceptance of the medium as a whole.

While all of this discussion of having and assessing cultural capital is necessary, it doesn’t speak to the more practical side of the equation. Namely, how is a fan able to increase their cultural capital and, more to the point, why would a fan want to increase their cultural capital in the first place? Since I touched on the answer to the latter question earlier in this chapter and it is the less complex of the two, I’ll address that first. How fans might go about increasing their capital is the subject of a later chapter: “A Culture of Participation.”

The reason why someone might want to increase their cultural capital is actually a subject I’ve already discussed: self-esteem. People uses comic book fandom as a means of connecting with one another and validating their sense of self. The other members of fandom share many of the same values as the individual, thus providing justification that the individual’s values are valid. Such a consensus approach provides ready and constant reassurance to the individual that the traits she or he uses to help provide a self-identity are considered valuable, thus promoting the internalized notion that the individual holding those characteristics is valuable as well.

Comics in this country have become very much a way to define oneself, either as a fan or as a creator. “This is my identity; I do this.”
—Landry Walker, Independents

One could argue that there are other reasons you might want to raise your cultural capital. Jerry Bails famously worked hard early in his fandom career to convince DC Comics to revive the Justice Society of America. There’s the possibility that comic fans with high cultural capital could be hired to work in the industry. There have been fans who tried to improve their standing within fandom in order to get emotionally closer to another individual, perhaps a potential love interest or a celebrity.

But beneath those rationales, and any other you might think of, is self-esteem. If you are trying to become a professional comic book artist because you think that will make you happy, that’s an attempt at improving your self-esteem. If you are trying to get a date with the cute cashier at the local comic shop because you think he or she will make you happy, that’s an attempt at improving your self-esteem. If you’re trying to help revive old characters that you really enjoyed as a kid, that’s an attempt at improving your self-esteem. Even the simple notion of swaying someone else’s opinion is, at heart, an issue of self-esteem; “Wow, my thoughts were valuable and/or powerful enough to convince someone else to my line of thinking.” That clearly is a validation of an individual’s thoughts, reinforcing their self-esteem by “proving” that he or she was right.

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with any of those rationales, and they’re all quite justifiable. People have an inherent desire to want to feel good about themselves and comic book fandom provides innumerable ways to help in that regard. Connecting with other people who share similar values provides an individual with a sense of belonging as they’re joining a community; it provides an individual with validation for the values they use to identify her- or himself; it provides active reinforcement and encouragement of their positive characteristics, and empathy and sympathy when those are lacking. The act of reading a comic book can provide happiness, but it’s really the connections with others—being able to really become a part of comic fandom—that gives an individual a longer term sense of joy and self-worth.

Your cultural capital asks how much sway you carry outside your immediate circle of friends.
—Juliette Powell, 33 Million People in the Room

Powell summed up the basic notion succinctly. Comic fans do want to persuade others to do things like hire them for jobs and change the editorial direction of a comic and show other people how valuable they are. This very book, in fact, is my trying to show you how I think comic fandom can be viewed.

Every individual is going to have different things that bring them joy and contentment, and it’s a basic human right to pursue that. But before I get to the ways in which fans try to raise their self-esteem through cultural capital, it’s worth noting that people often confuse that basic human right of pursuing happiness with an alleged right to happiness itself.

Promoted from Captain Marvel to Major Victory, Part 1

Typically, when people think of capital, they think of the financial capital involved with business and industry. CrossGen Comics had issues with their financial structure and couldn’t afford to pay their freelancers. Gorilla Comics couldn’t raise enough external money and ran into difficulties as the creators tried to finance their own comics. Charlton Comics ran into troubles when their sales declined enough that they couldn’t pay to keep up repairs on their deteriorating printing presses, much less buy new ones. Starting a new business of any sort, including the likes of comic publishers and retailers, requires a fair amount of initial capital investment to pay for getting things up and running. Most business majors in college will probably tell you that, if you’re opening your own business, you’ll need enough money at the start to essentially operate at a loss for the first two or three years.

But that’s not the type of capital that’s relevant to this discussion about comic book fans. Fandom can indeed be a source for this type of capital and there are conversations to be had along those lines; however, within the context of this book, this chapter will be looking at something called cultural capital.

The basic notion of cultural capital was introduced by Pierre Bourdieu in 1973, and was elaborated on by him over the ensuing decades. His essential premise was that there are, in fact, three types of capital: economic, social and cultural. I touched on economic capital in the opening paragraph above. Social capital is, to use the vernacular, all about who you know. Cultural capital is the knowledge, skills and wisdom someone has and is regarded as having value. Bourdieu originally used these descriptions in relation to French society at large and applied a somewhat limited view of what was culturally valuable. That is, cultural capital was someone’s knowledge and appreciation of “classical” forms of the arts created by the likes of William Shakespeare, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Leonardo da Vinci. It soon became apparent, however, that his application of the phrase he coined was rather limited in scope and highly subjective to his interpretation of value. In the years since then, cultural capital has been applied more broadly to encompass the values of any particular group. You should recognize by now that when I’m discussing a group’s values, I’m talking about the group prototype.

But Bourdieu still had hit on a good point: that money was not the only form of currency people used. People traded favors for political power; they educated themselves at schools to get better jobs; intellectual property was becoming as precious as physical property; grass roots organizations were making an impact on groups which had previously ignored their very existence. Clearly, something besides money was being bandied about as a means of exchange and this is where the ideas of social and cultural capital come into play.

To make sure everyone is perfectly clear on the distinctions between the three types of capital, let’s define them in relation to the comic industry. A comic book shop owner has a fair amount of economic capital; he or she has whatever is in the store’s bank account, of course, but also their inventory of comic book stock and, sometimes, the physical building itself and the property it rests on. An individual comic book fan has much the same type of economic capital, although often at a smaller scale relative to the shop owner. Social capital within the comic industry generally revolves around the names many comic fans are familiar with: the writers and artists of the most popular comics, as well as the editors, publishers, and other professionals in the industry. In short, if you start name-dropping comic professionals, you are using your social capital. Cultural capital in comicdom is how well you know the Nelvana mythos, whether or not you can recite the Green Lantern oath from memory, being able to determine who inked a comic just by looking at the style of brushwork, writing your own fan fiction and all the other traits that are considered valuable and part of the prototype. When a comic book fan utilizes the characteristics that are part of the prototype, they are showing their cultural capital.

The value of this cultural capital is immeasurable. Unlike economic capital, there is no concrete value one can ascribe to knowing a 50-year-old fictional character’s entire backstory. There is no way to score one person’s talent at discerning individual’s lettering styles against another person’s knowing which characters appeared in any given installment of Foxtrot. The traits might be considered valuable, but not in any quantitative sense. That said, an individual can accrue cultural capital just as they can accrue economic capital and use it to improve their status within the comic community.

It is relatively easy to see how someone can accrue economic capital. A person works at their job, earns money, and uses that to purchase comic books. The more comic books she or he buys, the more economic capital she or he has within comicdom. It’s also fairly easy to discern how someone might accrue social capital. First they meet a comic book professional and perhaps ask some questions. A dialogue between the two begins which might develop into a professional friendship. The professional could then introduce the fan to other professionals. The more people of importance the fan knows, and the more important they are, the more social capital they have.

Cultural capital is a bit more ephemeral. As noted earlier, the characteristics ascribed to the prototype are not able to merely be listed or categorized on a spreadsheet, but instead it is more of an accepted gestalt of the best traits seen in others. As cultural capital is just outward expression of these internalized ideas, it is likewise unable to be listed or categorized. The question that immediately and naturally arises, then, is: how can the amount of someone’s cultural capital be gauged? Fortune regularly creates a list of the wealthiest individuals from an economic perspective, and people frequently gauge their social capital by the number of contacts they have on various social networking sites.

There has yet to be a definitive way to assess someone’s cultural capital. It’s not unlike defining fandom in the sense that those within the group have an unwritten and almost inherent understanding of determining it. Fortunately, a single, decisive ranking of the value of fans’ cultural capital is unnecessary, much like economic rankings within one’s own circle of friends and relatives is unnecessary. The reason it’s unnecessary is that cultural capital is only of relative worth.

Whatever cultural capital you might have is only worth something to others who find that capital valuable. A comic fan who has memorized a great deal of information about the stable of Marvel characters might be well known and respected in his or her own circles, but that same information would mean very little to a fan of Matt Feazell’s mini-comics. Likewise, those interested in mini-comics have very little cultural capital as far as a fan of InuYasha might be concerned. Indeed, someone outside of comic fandom would find all of the cultural capital within fandom effectively useless. Recall that the praise-worthy values within fandom were designated by fandom itself, and they may not have any bearing or impact with outgroups.

The observation of someone else’s cultural capital cannot be done on sight. Further, it is inherently not static as the individual will continue to accumulate knowledge and traits considered valuable. (Alternatively, one can forget things as well and lose cultural capital but this is most often associated with decreased interest in fandom, if not a definitive break from it. The individual would likely cease calling him- or herself a fan and would have little or no use for the cultural capital established in that group in any event.) Thus, assessing cultural capital must be done over a period of time and is continually valuated.

When I first learned how to develop web pages, I quickly realized that I could transfer much of the knowledge and information I knew about the Fantastic Four to a website. My original intent was to have a readily accessible and easy-to-update system of keeping track of that information. That it was then shared with the rest of the world was something of an incidental concern for me at first. So I built a Fantastic Four website and began telling my online friends about it to share the information with them. At the time, there were several other Fantastic Four websites available and, not surprisingly, some of the information on our respective sites was similar. Over the ensuing few years, I continued adding new information and features and it wasn’t long before my site dwarfed the others in sheer size. The original articles I wrote, the creator interviews I conducted, the historical information I uncovered all showcased the cultural capital I had built up from reading the comics so closely over the years.

As one of the earlier fan sites that went online, and later one of the most robust, it became apparent to others that any one person who could write so much and at such depth on the Fantastic Four must have a great deal of expertise on the subject. Fantastic Four fans saw me display my cultural capital over the ten or so years that I ran that website in a way that hadn’t been seen previously. My cultural capital was so valuable to Marvel that they were willing to use economic capital to gain access to it; basically, they paid me for what I knew about the Fantastic Four. It was the cultural equivalent of owning a closet full of expensive suits, but never wearing them out of the house; and once I did start wearing them out, others were surprised.

However, despite whatever cultural capital I held with regard to comics at large, I was primarily only recognized within Fantastic Four circles since that was what I tended to put on display. Anything I might say on the subject of webcomics or fandom or other topics was largely irrelevant to the group I was often with, and not seen at all by those who might have had some interest in it. Thus, when I stopped working on my Fantastic Four site to focus on broader issues relating to comics, I was initially met with indifference since I was essentially coming to a new group as an unknown quantity. Within this different group, I had to be re-analyzed and re-assessed to see what sort of cultural capital, if any, I had. In many respects, I was starting over in comic fandom. Although there’s certainly no way to definitively quantify such analysis, I would have to say that it took at least a year or two to actively and aggressively highlight my cultural capital in this new group before it was even remotely close to where it had been in my previous one.

Cultural capital is also only relative in the sense that however much I have, it’s only really put in comparison with, at most, a handful of individuals at any one time. How much I have is not definitively quantifiable, but it is generally fairly easy to judge whether I have more or less than the next fan. Two fans discussing comic book history could discern who had more cultural capital simply by the examples each sets forth. If one fan only displayed knowledge of comics made within her or his lifetime, and the other was able to reference that material plus comics that had been published decades before that, the latter fan would generally be considered richer with regard to cultural capital. Certainly, not every example would be as cut and dried as that but, in instances where any sort of ambiguity might make a determination difficult, most people seem generally content with stating that the two fans had roughly the same amount of capital. Because of the imprecision in determining the full range of someone’s cultural capital, plus the time it takes to assess, large scale comparisons are impractical. Generally comparisons are limited to small groups and are very informal.

I Yam What I Yam, Part 2

Stability and continuity are important aspects of life in general, and we often use rituals as a stabilizer in our lives. Centuries ago, man simply didn’t understand much of what was going on around him, so he fell back on rituals to provide some continuity in his life. He wasn’t sure if he would be able to even find a mammoth, much less be able to kill and eat it. So he developed a ritual to perform in advance of the hunt because it was a way to give him security and confidence before taking steps outside his cave into the unknown. He knew that, even though he couldn’t count on the outcome of the hunt, he could count on the activities proceeding it.

By the twentieth century, man had figured out a great many things. Everything from fire and the wheel to creating and harnessing electricity to bring a small amount of daylight to the city streets at night. But while man’s knowledge has increased, providing a great many answers to what was previously unknown, we keep raising new questions at an increasingly rapid pace. So while I—a resident of the 21st century—can rest pretty comfortably knowing that I can reliably get something to eat any time I step outside my dwelling, I don’t have any clue what my long-term future looks like. In effect, my future is just as uncertain as that of our Australopithecus afarensis friend, Lucy—the only difference is that my future extends further out than my next meal.

Alvin Toffler, in the early 1970s, noted this and began touting the notion of “future shock.” The idea being that life is indeed moving much faster than at any point in man’s history and we, as human beings, are being forced to constantly adapt ourselves to ever-changing status quo; further, that some people simply cannot mentally keep up and experience a form of culture shock within the very culture they’ve been living in. The worldview they have held suddenly seems wildly out-dated compared to the environment they now realize they’re in. In extreme cases, future shock can resemble post-traumatic stress disorder.

A man living in the 1800s could pretty well assume that his day-to-day activities weren’t likely to change that radically over the course of his lifetime. He still had to question whether or not he could earn enough of a living to buy food and keep his belongings secure, but he knew that if he was a cobbler, his job wasn’t going to appreciably change at all during his lifetime. By contrast, today’s jobs are radically different than they were even ten years ago and we can counteract the emotional impact of that by using rituals to provide an ongoing continuity and sense of self to our own lives. Toffler argued that by ritualizing aspects of our lives, we are able to reduce the psychological impact of rapid environmental changes, the root cause of future shock. We are able to essentially turn ourselves off during a ritual process, giving us time to refresh and recharge ourselves, even in the presence of outside stimuli such as a comic book story.

We frequently do this almost subconsciously. Primarily because the repeated behaviors that eventually become a ritual are enjoyable. In the case of a comic book fan, they might return to their favorite comic book shop every week when new issues arrive. Although at first this is simply in order to purchase the newest comics, it becomes a routine as the weeks roll on, and eventually a ritual. The fan might head for the same store at the same time, or enter the store in the same manner, or exchange the same greeting with the employees. Regardless of the particulars, and almost regardless of what happens in the rest of the world, a comic book fan can walk into their local comic book shop once a week to purchase their latest favorite stories and take some solace in the familiar patterns they’ve developed in buying their favorite comics.

I was in a comic shop a few years ago on “New Comic Day”—the day when that week’s new comics are released. I was browsing the selections, and a gentleman walked in from the drizzling rain. The shop owner, having just sat down for a break from the regular hustle of business, greeted the customer with a sincere, “Mark! How’s it goin’? You’re in early today.” Mark proceeded to relay a story about having been fired not more than a few hours earlier and he’d need to trim down his comic purchases accordingly. On top of that, he then added, he had just found out the day before that he’s diabetic and he had to make some significant lifestyle changes, which would be extremely difficult now without being able to use his former company’s insurance. As he put it, he got a “one-two punch in the span of just over 24 hours.”

Mark’s life had been changed radically in a very short amount of time. One of the ways in which he was dealing with it was by attempting to carry out his habit of buying new comic books on a Wednesday afternoon. The ritual he had established in that particular store was familiar and therefore comforting, even if it was somewhat disturbed by other events in his life. Mark likely went home after purchasing whatever new issues he felt he could then afford, and carried out another set of rituals in reading them. Perhaps in a favorite chair, or with a particular type of music playing in the background. He embraced the familiar as a form of stability during an otherwise very turbulent time.

Fandom itself also provides a sense of stability to the individual. One of the reasons Mark stopped at the store was for sympathy and emotional support. The owner and manager of the store were the part of comic fandom that he specifically knew, and they showed an open and obvious compassion for Mark, as well as an appreciation for what he must have been going through. Indeed, as soon as Mark finished his pronouncement, the manager came up and hugged him with a visibly heart-felt embrace. She then invited him into the back of the store where they could sit and talk more privately. She almost certainly noted his positive attributes, helping to sooth his self-worth while reinforcing the values to which he ascribed as a comic book fan. While he had suffered some devastating setbacks, his characteristics which could help carry him through the adversity were no doubt rooted in his worth as a comic book fan. Not that those were the only characteristics which would help him, of course, but they would be the ones the comic shop manager would have been most familiar with, since her primary dealings with Mark all related back to their shared interest in comics.

The question of fandom’s eventual homogenization seems like one that is bound to come up in this type of discussion. If all comic fans are working towards becoming as much like their prototype as possible, the logical end-point would be when all fans become the same. This, as should be readily observable, does not happen. In the first place, as noted recently, the prototypical comic book fan so many are trying to become is ever-changing. Important values and traits may become less significant in lieu of new values and traits. Each fan works toward minimizing the difference between her- or himself and the prototype at different rates based on their opportunities and/or abilities. Fans rarely reach a uniform level of similarity, and the constantly changing end-point ensures that everyone remains on the path. Using a comic book analogy, one person might be one the opening splash page of a comic while another might be on page 16, while still another might be on a different panel of page 16, and yet another might be in the next issue. It’s part of the same story, but at different stages of it.

Furthermore, different roles within the group place individuals on altogether different tracks. Indeed, many people working in the comic book industry are there because they were a fan of comic books first. So while one person might become a professional comic book artist, another might be a comic retailer. While one might be an area representative for a distributor, another might be an editor. Though their titles make them easy to cite, comic professionals aren’t the only ones following different tracks within fandom. Leadership roles can be assigned by those moderating message boards or chat rooms; the term “letterhack” was created to categorize individuals who wrote in to publishers and had many of their letters published; some people might just assume the function of “the guy who knows a lot about Johan and Peewit.” The roles aren’t ones that necessarily can be easily defined, and any one person can take up multiple roles.

Amusingly, this was played up in Marvel’s first official fan club. In 1967, editor-in-chief Stan Lee reproduced a somewhat tongue-in-cheek letter from a fan that read, in part...

I have watched the MMMS turn into disorganized chaos! (And that’s the worst kind!) As a solution, I suggest we have some officers. By buying his first Marvel mag, a fan is automatically entitled to the rank of RFO (Real Frantic One). His first published letter elevates him to QNS (Quite ‘Nuff Sayer)...
—Mark Evanier, Fantastic Four #64

Other fans wrote in approving of the idea, and Lee soon instituted a formal ranking system for Marvel fans, based on Evanier’s and others’ suggestions. While not taken entirely seriously, it still proved to be a functional shorthand that could be used to help gauge someone’s involvement in Marvel fandom in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The more rankings they earned, the more deeply involved with the entire line they were. Indeed, simply knowing of the system showed more than a passing level of involvement.

As an aside, Evanier would soon afterwards go on to become an assistant to creator Jack Kirby and later a fairly well-known writer in his own right. And, on a personal side note, I was proud to have earned the first three of the six official rankings before graduating high school and got two more in college. I haven’t combed through the letters pages of each and every Marvel comic throughout this period, but I have never run across an instance of anyone earning the final ranking of Fearless Front-Facer. Although I think it’s safe to presume Lee did at least bestow it on himself in his typical self-deprecating manner.

Since we found out earlier that any one group would tend to max itself out around 150 members, that means that there can easily be multiple people in the same stage and/or filling the same role simultaneously within the larger body of comic fandom. Using some of the easy-to-define examples, Chris Claremont and Scott Lobdell were both writing X-Men comics at the same time, thus defining both men as X-Men writers, but they were at different points in their careers then. Brian Clevinger and Scott Wegener both worked on Atomic Robo at roughly the same point in their careers, but in different roles: writer and artist. Steve Lieber and Jeff Parker worked their way into the industry as artists roughly in tandem and shared studio space together; however, the projects they worked on led one to more work for DC Comics and the other to more work for Marvel Comics, putting them in distinctly different groups.

It’s certainly possible, often likely, that an individual can change their role within a group or reach farther along on their path. While success for moving around within fandom generally relies on ability, effort and motivation, the currency that is almost always involved is called “cultural capital.”

I Yam What I Yam, Part 1

I defined comic book fandom, in part, by stating that it was a collective decision for someone to become a part of fandom. Simply being a fan wasn’t enough to join the ranks of fandom; you had to be accepted by fandom itself to be considered part of the group. These are all parts of social identity theory, and are a fairly well-accepted means of looking at groups like comic book fans. More recently, something of an extension of social identity theory called self-categorization theory was developed. Interestingly, despite its roots in social identity theory, self-categorization theory heads in an almost entirely opposite direction focusing on, not surprisingly given its name, the way an individual views her- or himself.

Earlier in the book, I discussed briefly how members of a group develop a prototype. Looking at the existing characteristics of individual group members, they subconsciously create a mental ideal of what traits are most acceptable or most valuable within their circle.

Prototypes are ordinarily unlikely to be checklists of attributes... rather, they are fuzzy-sets which capture the context-dependent features of group membership often in the form of exemplary members (actual group members who best embody the group) or ideal types (an abstraction of group features). People are able to assess the prototypicality of real group members, including self—that is, the extent to which a member is perceived to be close or similar to the group prototype.
—Michael Hogg, Social Groups & Identities

What Hogg is saying here, as it relates to comic fans, is that people develop prototypes based on the best examples from fandom and then, with such a prototype defined, individuals can weigh their, or anyone else’s, characteristics against the prototype’s. In effect, they use the prototype as the basis by which to judge how much of a “real” fan someone is; a “real” fan would meet all or most of the criteria embodied by the prototype. As Hogg notes, there isn’t a checklist of attributes one consciously goes through, but fans can generally make an almost subconscious assessment by mentally overlaying an individual with the prototype to see how well the two align. Think of it like comparing signatures by placing the two pieces of paper on top of one another and holding them up to a light. One signature is known as being definitive and reliable (i.e. the prototype) and the other being a signature whose authenticity you’re checking for (i.e. the individual).

Conversely, this is generally not done for outgroups. While a prototype for an outgroup member may exist in the mind of a comic fan, they often simply apply the prototype to an outgroup member instead of making an actual comparison. In effect, this is stereotyping (and a large basis for Tajfel’s research on social identity theory). People default to broad categorizations to more readily identify and deal with outgroup members, rather than spending time to learn the specific idiosyncrasies of an individual. It is believed this is done to help facilitate faster communications by allowing people to rely on prior experiences with or knowledge of other members of similar outgroups.

But for members of the ingroup, this comparison against the prototype provides a form of self-identification with an ongoing stream of feedback. Both social identity theory and self-categorization theory do have a fundamental assumption that says people have a strong desire to establish and maintain a generally positive self-image. It is for that reason that they join groups in the first place and why they enhance their existing characteristics to more closely match a group prototype. Indeed, one’s self-esteem is not infrequently a reason to pick up a comic in the first place.

Mick Martin relayed his experience in buying his first comic book on the “Trouble with Comics” blog in 2009...

I was very conscious of why I bought the comic. The cover made it appear to be a story in which the Hulk faced down the rest of the world’s superheroes... I was a lonely and angry kid. I felt like the other kids at school would like me if they just tried to get to know me, and I dreamed of the day that would happen. In the meantime, every day on the playground felt exactly like the cover of The Incredible Hulk #278. The thing that never occurred to me until I saw the comic was that maybe on that playground I was the hero, and all those bastards who made fun of me, they were the assholes.

An individual within fandom, as discussed earlier, has derived a fan prototype from the most valued traits that are relevant to the group. This prototype, when compared with those held for significant outgroups, is almost invariably positive. The typical comic fan is seen as superior to a stereotypical outgroup member since a member of fandom has more characteristics of value. The valued traits are, by definition, highly valued but still seen as an achievable ideal to aspire to. As the prototype is often built on direct examples of real individuals within the group, the ideal is actually considered attainable and can be established a realistic life goal. If, for example, the comic book fan prototype has at least 10,000 issues in his personal collection, it would not be difficult to find any number of specific fans who have achieved exactly that. Using another example, if the comic fan prototype is in some form of regular communication with a professional comic artist, it is likewise not difficult to find any number of specific fans who are engaged in daily conversations with their favorite creators. This very real possibility of becoming more like the fan prototype is able to provide a continual stream of small ego-boosts for an individual as they achieve a series of goals in making themselves more like the prototype.

Soon after I began reading The Fantastic Four regularly, I realized that a “real” fan of Marvel Comics knew a great deal about their entire cache of characters, not just the four showcased in my favorite title. My budget, not surprisingly, was limited and I could only afford four comics per month, so I made a very deliberate decision to follow The Fantastic Four, The West Coast Avengers, Silver Surfer and The Punisher. My reasoning was that The Fantastic Four and West Coast Avengers both covered decent-sized groups of characters on opposite coasts of the United States, thus keeping me abreast of the biggest events with the most characters, while Silver Surfer and The Punisher provided opportunities to stay current with cosmic- and street-level stories respectively. I felt safe in the assumption that repeated guest appearances of Spider-Man and the X-Men would keep me up to speed on those decidedly more popular characters. Additionally, getting copies of The Official Handbook to the Marvel Universe from a friend gave me essentially a character encyclopedia for everyone else. I was able to establish myself as a “real” Marvel fan because I knew what was going on across the company’s entire line of superhero comics. I might not have been able to buy as many comics as some people, but because I specifically tailored my reading habits, I had a better understanding of the overall tapestry than most and was, in my mind at least, more of a Marvel fan than most.

As I began becoming more interested in comics as a medium, I began hearing references to comics and graphic novels beyond the Marvel Comics I had spent years reading. While the disparate publishers prevented me from taking the exact same tactics I had used earlier, I was able to proceed with a similar strategy. I began picking up comics that would provide the most relevant and wide-ranging look at the medium as a whole. I couldn’t buy the entire output of Will Eisner, but A Contract With God did a pretty good job of showcasing his abilities; I couldn’t track down the complete collected works of Walt Kelly or George Herriman, but I could borrow my father’s slightly dog-eared collections of Pogo and Krazy Kat that he bought in college. I became familiar enough with a broad enough swath of creators that I felt comfortable talking about more than just Marvel heroes. I made (and still make) a series of decidedly targeted readings to better familiarize myself with the entire medium of comics. I was taking steps towards the mental prototype of a comic book fan that was in my head, and each accomplishment—finding and understanding how various creators approach their work, not necessarily acquiring the work itself—moved me one step nearer becoming a “real” comic book fan.

Over the years, I have become, as far as my self-identity is concerned, more and more of a comics fan. My ongoing reading and research gives me a deeper appreciation for the medium and its creators, and a better understanding of the medium on the whole. I am closer to the prototypical fan than I was a decade ago, with a resulting increase in my self-esteem. Those traits that I value in the comic fan prototype, the ones that I feel make someone a “real” comic fan, are ones that I admire as an ideal; and because I am closer now to that ideal than I used to be makes me proud. I am acquiring more traits of value, giving me a greater sense of self-worth and making me happier and more content.

This is further reinforced by the rest of comic fandom. If comic book fans, on the whole, all place high value on a certain characteristic of the prototype, and you display that characteristic yourself, other fans will respond positively. This can be seen on display in any number of fashions. A clear example of direct reinforcement can be seen during trivia challenges at comic book conventions which reward those contestants with the most knowledge about comic books with prizes. Less direct, but certainly more common, examples occur in casual discussions about comics. One fan might cite the number of comics in their possession while others nod approvingly or otherwise appear visibly impressed. Though less impactful, even a simple “Right on!” or “Woot!” response on a message board encourages and validates the individual’s self-image. Others are openly acknowledging of the valuable assets a single fan has, reiterating the message that the fan her- or himself is valuable.

All of these serve to bolster one’s self-esteem, but they also serve to reinforce the validation of the group itself. The encouragement and support shown through group intra-action shows the individual that, not only are they worthy of love and respect but also, that such love and respect is administered by members of the group. A comic fan whose thoughts and ideas are valued is encouraged to share more by other fans. While those thoughts and ideas could certainly by shared with anyone, they are likely to be most appreciated by others who have similar tastes and aesthetic sensibilities; namely, members of that very same group of comic fans. Consequently, the fan’s thoughts and ideas are shared back with the group, who receive them eagerly. The fan’s self-esteem is raised, as is the perceived benefit of the group of fans who helped raise it.

This cyclical process is not necessarily perpetual. Both the individual fan’s and the overall fandom’s values can change. A single person, of course, can at any time re-evaluate their priorities. Perhaps the birth of a child, a change in vocation or a debilitating illness might bring about such a re-evaluation. At the fandom level, a change in the economy, shifts in publication policies and technological improvements can impact how the prototype is collectively altered. Self-publishing is a prime example of how technology can change the values of fandom. The fanzines of the 1950s and 1960s were not infrequently drawn with relative crudeness, in large part because the production technology was limited to a handful of individuals who did not necessarily have much artistic ability, and there was a clear demarcation between professional comics and amateur ones. As technology improved and became more readily available, more artists were able to produce their own works that were comparable in quality to that of the largest publishers. Technology continued to improve and by the 21st century, virtually any creator who had the desire could develop an online comic for a website that might be indistinguishable from those of the major players. Accordingly, fandom’s attitude towards comics from “non-professionals” has changed. As has the very definition of comic professional, as I’ll elaborate on later.