Considers how comics display our everyday stuff-junk drawers, bookshelves, attics-as a way into understanding how we represent ourselves now
For most of their history, comics were widely understood as disposable-you read them and discarded them, and the pulp paper they were printed on decomposed over time. Today, comic books have been rebranded as graphic novels-clothbound high-gloss volumes that can be purchased in bookstores, checked out of libraries, and displayed proudly on bookshelves. They are reviewed by serious critics and studied in university classrooms. A medium once considered trash has been transformed into a respectable, if not elite, genre.
While the American comics of the past were about hyperbolic battles between good and evil, most of today-s graphic novels focus on everyday personal experiences. Contemporary culture is awash with stuff. They give vivid expression to a culture preoccupied with the processes of circulation and appraisal, accumulatio
