Objects of art

I'm not sure what to think of Marvel's recent decision to begin to offer its back catalogue digitally. Inevitable, obviously, but still surprising.

I've been a buyer of 'singles' for many years.  A collector without the pretence of investment - a reluctant hoarder of paper.  For the last few years I've harbored fantasies of breaking free from my sentimentality for printed matter, recycling my collection and replacing them with illicitly scanned digital copies.

But for more than a decade American comics have been emphasising and fetishising the physical form.  The paper, the printing, special dies, metallic inks, embossed covers.  They've been pitching to a dwindling nostalgia crowd, while the next generation embraced manga.  Black and white, tersely illustrated, cheaply printed.  A form that emphasised the content over its physical form.  Bits versus atoms.

And while I don't doubt collectors exist, I'd imagine that hoarding manga's phone directories might seem unfeasible in the notoriously small apartments of Japanese cities.  To me, paper always seemed to just be its transitory form.

Franco-Belgian comics seem to be the antithesis of this.  The primary form for "les BD" is the album, a hardback of roughly magazine dimensions (similar to a UK comic annual) with a page count equivalent to two or three US singles.  Richly coloured, densely illustrated, expensively printed.  And while you often hear
about greater acceptance of the comics form in other countries, it's still surprising to someone from the Anglosphere to see new comic releases receiving the same level of promotion that a new CD or DVD might get.

I feel like a mutt of both cultures.  A bit like British stalwart 2000ad, I suppose.  Its black-and-white newsprint legacy sitting side-by-side with its euro aspirations (just compare the Sláine of the 80s with the 'Books of Invasions').

When stocking up on new comics I tend to favour Orbital on Charing Cross Road. Easily overlooked, its foreboding basement entrance seems to announce itself as the London headquarters for the Resistance Movement Against Mainstream Acceptance of Comics.  My girlfriend won't even go near it for fear of being
tainted.  It's like being in a religion without evangelists.  Our cultural curse.

But my Parisian doppelgänger is making his weekly comics-run on Rue Dante - an upmarket area dominated by comic book stores.  (Actually only a few different comic shops - the Haussmannian constructions of the 5th arrondissement are unsuited to modern retail and single stores get split up into multiple boutiques.)  And the comics he's buying are placed on a shelf, not secreted away in white cardboard filing cabinets.

But, like I said, physicality is sentimentally.  Data isn't a hassle when you're moving house.