The Laugh Factory’s sign is illuminated on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, a section of the street that has seen enough reinventions in the entertainment business to be rather unshakeable. Most nights, someone is performing for an audience that came particularly to laugh—not to watch content or stream a special, but to be in the room as someone attempts to be funny in real time, which is a distinct and far more vulnerable thing. Jamie Masada, the club’s founder, has been in charge since 1979. Despite his many comedic instincts, his most recent one has caused a reaction for which the stand-up community seemed really unprepared: he created trading cards.
The Laugh Factory created Series 1, the first stand-alone trading card set ever made specifically for stand-up comedians, in collaboration with EPOCH, a Japanese collectibles firm known for its high-end manufacturing. Given that the venue’s walls are essentially plastered with the history of American comedy, the launch took place at the club itself in Hollywood, which seemed fitting. More than twenty comedians, including current stars, up-and-coming performers, and veterans like Joan Rivers, Robin Williams, and Richard Pryor, are featured in the 50+ card set.
These comedians are recognized with cards related to their prior appearances on Laugh Factory Magazine covers. Living comics like Dane Cook and Howie Mandel have signed signatures on the cards. Small swatches of garments that were actually worn on stage can be seen on apparel relic cards. It is a serious hobby card product in practically every technical sense.
It has caused a genuine rift that extends beyond a disagreement over cards. The project’s proponents contend that comedians have influenced American culture just as much as athletes or singers, and that the lack of a stand-up collectibles market has always been an odd rather than a moral oversight.
The idea that a Richard Pryor autograph card is somehow less legitimate than a Derek Jeter rookie card requires some assumptions about which forms of performance deserve documentation that don’t hold up particularly well under examination. Masada has made this argument directly, and it’s not an unreasonable position. There appears to be a sincere desire among comics who signed on to have their work handled with the same historical seriousness that music and sports have long enjoyed.
However, the argument put up by the critics is different and should be taken seriously. At its most basic, stand-up comedy is a live, fleeting phenomenon in which a person in a room says something that only works with that particular audience at that particular moment.
Some comics have voiced unease about trading cards, but it’s more about what it means to package the comedian as a product and reduce a performance art based on risk and rawness into a parallel variant and a relic swatch than it is about the cards themselves. Those criticisms give the impression that something about the connection between art and commerce has changed in a manner that is difficult to undo once you can collect comic books the same way you can collect quarterbacks.
It’s still unknown if the comedy-card crossover will continue to be a curiosity that collectors pick up once and never return to, or if Series 1 will find an audience big enough to support a Series 2. Stranger concepts have been successfully incorporated into the hobby card market, and the Laugh Factory’s institutional influence in the comedy industry lends the initiative greater legitimacy than a standard celebrity card set.
As the response develops, it seems that the argument itself is more fascinating than any single card in the set. This may be appropriate for a product based on a medium that has always been more at ease with pain than with resolution.
