Geographies
摘要
This chapter considers the digital comic as an object in space and explores the impact of location on the digital work. The chapter looks at four key areas: localities, nationalities, languages and law. In its discussion of localities, the chapter deals with the question of local communities in the digital age and asks what it might mean for a ‘local’ comic to be a digital work. Next, the scope is widened to the national scale, and consideration is given to how forms and formats that have previously had national associations, such as the Franco-Belgian album might be rearticulated in a digital context, as well as how economic structures, such as the Direct Market interact with digital concerns. The subject of language is explored next, and the practice of scanlation, fan-made scan-translations, is discussed as an example of how the digital context has remapped the comics landscape by allowing for a globalised circulation of goods that would previously have remained mostly within the boundaries of a particular region. Finally, the chapter considers various aspects of law as they apply to digital comics, including location, tax and duty, copyright and fair use, and prohibited content.