The document discusses two case studies of cultural organizations focused on comics: 1) A city gallery that hosted a comics exhibition but failed to understand the medium and incurred significant unexpected costs, losing money. 2) A comic book club from the 1970s that introduced children to new titles and creators, organized swap meets, but ultimately disbanded after a large show lost money. The club founder continues a small annual show focused on local community and learning from guest creators.

1. Virtues, Vices, and Media
Practices: Towards a
Normative Framework for
Cultural Policy
Benjamin Woo
School of Communication
Simon Fraser University

2. Virtues, Vices, and Media-
oriented Practices: Towards a
Normative Framework for
Cultural Policy
Benjamin Woo
School of Communication
Simon Fraser University

8. The gap between textually-based studies and policy
cannot be bridged merely by further refinements in
theories of representation, in new understandings of
the audience or the “progressive text,” or in notions of
sub-cultural resistance.
Stuart Cunningham, “Cultural Studies from the
Viewpoint of Cultural Policy,” in Critical Cultural
Policy Studies: A Reader, ed. Justin Lewis and
Toby Miller (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002), 19.

10. I guess that’s something that I do
value because I miss it in some of
the communities that I’m a part of
right now, some of the fannish
communities. I respect the [Society
for Creative Anachronism] for being
quite strong on that.
On what aspect of that,
specifically? Support?
On support, on commitment ... on
obligations, duty, advancement,
excellence.
“Barry,” SF fan and re-creationist

11. One example of a character that
currently is popular is Deadpool.
However, they’re doing what in the
past they’ve done and has been kind
of a dangerous thing to do: they’re
flooding the market with Deadpool
products. There are comics that don’t
even feature Deadpool in the story,
but they’ll make a special variant
cover for that comic that has
Deadpool on it just to get the
Deadpool people to buy it, which
is ... I don’t want to use too
derogatory a term, but I guess there’s
no real nice way to put it: It’s low.
“Donald,” comic-bookstore owner

12. Yeah, science-fiction, fantasy. But no
Twilight.
No?
I’m sorry, but glowing vampires are
wrong. They sparkle in the sun.
I hear they're like crack, though.
((laughs)) I don’t care. It’s just wrong.
“Diana,” gamer and SF fan

14. Consummative
practices*.

15. • Goods related to interpretation
• Goods related to alternative forms of
sociability

16. Henry Jenkins
“Participatory culture”

17. • A “particular mode of
reception” and a “particular
set of critical and interpretive
practices” Jenkins, Textual
Poachers, (London:
Routledge, 1992), 277–78.
Henry Jenkins
“Participatory culture”

18. • A “particular mode of
reception” and a “particular
set of critical and interpretive
practices” Jenkins, Textual
Poachers, (London:
Routledge, 1992), 277–78.
• Play, performance,
simulation, and transmedia
navigation Jenkins et al.,
Confronting the Challenges
of Participatory Culture
Henry Jenkins (Cambridge, MA: The MIT
“Participatory culture” Press, 2009), xiv.

19. • A “particular mode of
reception” and a “particular
set of critical and interpretive
practices” Jenkins, Textual
Poachers, (London:
Routledge, 1992), 277–78.
• Play, performance,
simulation, and transmedia
navigation Jenkins et al.,
Confronting the Challenges
of Participatory Culture
Henry Jenkins (Cambridge, MA: The MIT
“Participatory culture” Press, 2009), xiv.
• Appropriation Jenkins et al.,
Confronting Participatory
Culture, xiv.

20. • “Fandom functions as an alternative social
community.” Jenkins, Textual Poachers, 280.
• R.W. Connell, “Hegemonic
masculinity”/“emphasized femininity”

21. I had all but given up hope that any man would
accept me as an intellectual equal. But most male
fans did[....] That fact alone made fandom seem
very progressive in America in the ’50s.
Juanita Coulson, “Why is a Fan?,” in Science
Fiction Fandom, ed. Joe Sanders (Westport, CT:
Greenwood Press, 1994), 7.

23. • Goods related to interpretation
• Goods related to alternative forms of
sociability

24. Just as the good life for an individual depends on
her subordination of external to internal goods rather
than her accumulation of external goods for their
own sake, so too does the good of practices—and
therefore of individuals as practitioners—require that
money, power and authority be organized for the
sake of goods internal to practices rather than
substituted for their pursuit. A teleological ordering
of social relations would subordinate institutions to
practices.
Kelvin Knight, “After Tradition?: Heidegger or
MacIntyre, Aristotle and Marx,” Analyse & Kritik 30
(2008), 44.

26. 1. City Gallery

27. Other
8%
Sponsorships Gov't grants
5% 22%
Gallery Store
17%
Investment income
3% Admissions and memberships
22%
Fundraising and bequests
20% Exhibition loan fees
3%

28. They were going, “Oh, you get all this space free
and you can have this and this and this.” It’s like, “All
right, that sounds good,” and I’m waiting for the
other shoe to drop, which they didn’t drop until just
before the thing, which was, “Oh, we don’t actually
have any tables. You have to rent all these tables,
and you have to set them up because our union
guys won’t set them up. And you can’t charge
admission. And you can’t do this. And, oh, we need
this much for security guards.” […] And, the back of
my head, I knew that there’s like a running meter
somewhere, but because they weren’t saying what it
was I was only guessing that I was short[....] That
show lost a shitload of money.

30. They didn’t get a lot of things about comics. Going
back all the way to their first press conference for
the show when somebody, one of the media, asked
why there were no superhero comics there. And the
guy, I guess the head curator of the gallery, said,
“Oh, because you don’t need to see superhero
comics.” Like, he basically said that superhero
comics are shit and you don’t need them. Yet, they
wanted us to bring in superhero comic artists to do
programming for them on the weekend. And when
one of them called them on it, it was like, “Oh, well,
we’re just trying to start a dialogue.” It’s like, “All
right, let’s have that dialogue.” “Oh no no, that’s
amongst you.”

32. 2. Comic-book Club

33. This was in the ’70s, when we were kids. There used
to be a comic-book club that was formed as some
summer programme that somebody organized.
They got government money somehow to do this, so
they put out ads, and kids would just show up from
all over the place. We’d hang out over the night, and
these … they were adults … they would show us
comics.

35. That sort of turned us on to stuff beyond DC and
Marvel: that was the first time we saw Cerebus when
it was just coming out; Will Eisner, that was our first
exposure to Eisner; the Hernandez Brothers. I mean
all of that stuff we sort of started seeing through
these guys [....] So, it was just like we’d come and
hang out and we’d talk about comics and read
comics, and it would be a couple hours every week.

37. The club organized these little swap meets, and that
went on for a few years. The club tried to do a big
show [...] and lost money left, right, and centre, and
then imploded after that because nobody wanted to
be left holding the bag with the debt. And so we all
sort of went on our way. Some of us stayed in touch,
others didn’t, but we all just sort of quit putting on
these shows and stuff.

39. So, I got hauled back into this, going, “Look, these
guys are doing these shows, and, you know, they’re
charging this much money for tables, and kids can’t
afford to go in.” And it’s like, “All right. Well, if we can
find a small place to do it at, maybe we'll explore it
again.”

41. Every year, I’m sort of like, “Do I want to do it again?
I don’t know.” But part of it is, like, [comic artist]
Howard Chaykin will email me out of the blue and
go, “I want to come up next year. I want to hang
out.” That’s sort of cool. That’s fun. The fact they [the
guests] don’t mind spending time with local creators
and basically giving them a one-on-one this-is-what-
it’s-like—they get something out of it. I think most of
them [the local creators] appreciate that they can sit
and have a beer with whoever and basically learn
from these people. Honestly, as long as it’s fun, I’ll
keep doing it.

43. In the cultural industries[...,] an issue that haunts
nearly all discussions of quality is the audience.
Products and services in any industry tend
ultimately to be for someone. But the cultural
industries are oriented towards consumption in
particular ways, for they are centred on acts of
communication more than any other set of
organisations.
David Hesmondhalgh and Sarah Baker, Creative
Labour: Media Work in Three Cultural Industries
(London: Routledge, 2010), 200.