How does one assign value to a medium assumed to possess no value? The question could apply to any form of printed ephemera—magazines, newspapers, and other disposable print, for instance—but it is particularly resonant for comics, which, for the bulk of its existence, has been an object of public disdain. The narrative is familiar to anyone working in the field of comics studies; from newspaper strips consumed and discarded on a daily basis, to crime and adventure comic books blasted as insidious influences on young readers, to contemporary superhero comics derided as corporate artworks more beholden to shareholder demands than aesthetic quality, comics is a medium seemingly beset on all sides by assertions of its own worthlessness. While various incarnations of comics have become more culturally ubiquitous in the twenty-first century, adapted into films and television series, proliferating online, and filling bookstore shelves, that success has aroused even greater suspicion...

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