Museum, Manifesto and Catalogue. The Patrimonialization of Comic Books by Anthologies

Owing to the industrial nature of their production, comic books, a medium used for a part of American comics, long struggled to form a corpus that could be promoted and recognized as heritage. This process of patrimonialization was especially performed through their publication in book format, starting in the 1960s with the release of anthologies. The different modalities of anthological discourse -at once that of a museum, a manifesto and a catalogue- are as much constructions of a social value for comic books as they are an inscription of their past in the present. Through a presentation of these modalities, it is the necessarily composite nature of patrimonialization that is brought to light. It is not a one-way process but rather a combination of different courses that are performed by actors with differing positions and natures.