ABSTRACT
Noting and offering some explanation for the comic book industry’s relative absence as a research area from the broader field of media industry studies, this chapter seeks to prompt future examinations by describing how such research might work and why it would be valuable to the field as a whole. Accordingly, we introduce and assess three possible ways of construing the twenty-first-century American comic book industry: as its own industry, as part of the book industry, and as part of the filmed entertainment industry. Each of these ways of defining the comic book industry, we demonstrate, results in different conceptualizations of the industry’s primary output and mode of distribution. When conceived as its own industry, these are the comic book periodical and direct-market retail distribution respectively; when conceived as part of the book industry, these are the graphic novel and bookstore retail distribution; and when conceived as part of the filmed entertainment industry, these are copyrights and trademarks (i.e., intellectual property) and licensing. The different ways of defining the industry privilege different sets of research questions and methodologies, which we describe. Rather than arguing for a single, correct way of defining the comic book industry, we conclude that all three ways of defining it offer productive research strategies. We thus advocate for a multipositioned approach to comics industry research, which we suggest might serve as useful model for thinking about and studying intra- and inter-industrial relationships within the media industries more broadly.
