I am a Geek

[elspethdixon]

Debating whether I can reference superdickery.com in a paper on the uses and treatment of ephemera. I bet comics count as ephemera -- if brochures, flyers, musical programs, restaurant menues, political buttons, and chapbooks count, then so do comics.

Actually, I'm not so sure chapbooks should count. They may very very cheap books, but they're still books, and not intended for a short-time, single purpose use. Technically, neither are comics, but I bet you could make a case for old, 1930s comics. Sold from newsstands, printed on cheap paper, generally considered disposable... ephemera!

(Buttons definately = no. They are physical artifacts, as are stamped pennies, wooden signs, and anything else that's not paper-based or photographic).

There are times when I thank God I did all that history and English -- because I can pull Lyon's Sex Among the Rabble and Alice Fah's The Imagined Civil War off my book shelf to pad this paper out with examples of the usefulness of print ephemera to historians.

Comments

[megalotro.livejournal.com]

Ooo~ veddy interesting. I have to agree that probably in general comics wouldn't be considered ephemera, but you could make a very strong argument for it - both for the cheap older comics, and now with the internets we tend toward keeping things digitally vs. easily damaged paper comics. I personally consider the single issue comics I buy to be disposable and only really retain trades. Hm~ and the comic book shop I frequent gives out free 'throw away' comics all the time when you buy stuff.

So, yeah :) Good luck with sorting it all out! :)

-Tro

(lol, if I could not typo a LOT, that'd be great)

[elspethdixon.livejournal.com]

I really wanted to do my research paper purely on comics, but since there aren't any archival collections of comics (save probably for Marvel and DC's corporate archives, which is totally where I want to work -- Marvel, not DC), I was reduced to doing "Print Ephemera; What the Hell is It, How the Hell Do You Arrange and Describe It, and Why Should We Care?"

(Answers: everyone seems to define it differently, it depends, and because it's cool cultural historians need it)

[megalotro.livejournal.com]

Comics research paper would have been super ultra awesome :) Working for Marvel would be pretty much the sweetest thing ever ^__________^ Always did make me a little sad that I'm a bit too much sucking at drawing to consider going into comics~

Still~ Ephemera is a pretty neat topic :)

-Tro

[lilacsigil.livejournal.com]

You could definitely make a case for WWII and earlier comics being disposable - comics were specifically included in wartime paper recycling drives, like newspapers and magazines.