We are delighted to announce the winners of the eighth Martin Schüwer-Publication Prize for Excellence in Comics Studies 2026!
For the eighth time, the German Society for Comics Studies (ComFor) and the Committee for Comics Studies at the German Society for Media Studies (GfM) are awarding the Martin Schüwer Publication Prize for Excellence in Comics Studies. The prize has been awarded annually since 2019. It supports scholars who, regardless of their actual age, do not yet hold a permanent academic position. By honoring outstanding publications in the field of interdisciplinary comics research, the award aims to create more visibility for comics-related research, promoting and communicating its importance to a wider public.
The prize is named after the late Martin Schüwer, a scholar of English Literature and Culture who specialized in comics studies and who passed away far too early in 2013. His dissertation Wie Comics erzählen (2008), published 18 years ago, broke new ground for narratological comics research and has become a reference work in German-language comics studies. With this and his other works on comics as well as on the didactics of English literature, Martin Schüwer set valuable standards for the excellence, accessibility and range that publications in our fields can achieve. Both as a comics researcher and as a person, Schüwer had a distinct way of engaging with people, characterized by his open-mindedness and a genuine interest in others. Talking with and to others, he aimed to advance comics studies. We dedicate the award to him and this very goal.
This year, the award is given to Lara Rößig for “‘Go West, Young Duck’—Renegotiating the Myth of the American Frontier in a Scrooge McDuck Comic Book”. It has been published in the journal Amerikastudien / American Studies 70.2 (2025): pp. 171–195 and is available in open access. On behalf of ComFor and the Committee for Comics Studies, this year’s jury congratulates Lara Rößig on her contribution to the field of comics research. An honorable mention is given to Emmy Waldman for her article “OXO, Spiegelman: Tic-Tac-Toe and the Art of Losing,” published in Contemporary Literature 66.2 (2025): pp. 241–280.
Laudatio for Lara Rößig
The essay by Lara Rößig is distinguished by a precise, theoretically grounded, and at the same time materially attentive analysis of the cultural construction of the myth of the American West. Particularly compelling is her account of how this myth circulates across different media forms – from dime novels and Wild West shows to Hollywood films – and is productively reworked in the comic The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck. In doing so, she convincingly combines her analysis of the comic with an interview she conducted herself with Don Rosa, thereby opening up the work’s significance within a broader cultural and medial context.
A central strength of the study lies in its careful interweaving of visual, textual, and translational analysis. Rößig demonstrates, for instance, through the shift from “cowboy” in the English original to “Rinderbaron” in the German translation, how differently the cowboy myth is framed in each cultural context, and how translation here is not merely transfer but itself a site of cultural transformation. Her analysis of landscape representations, weather atmospheres, cinematic quotations, such as the reference to High Noon in the confrontation scene in Johannesburg, and reconstructed motifs is carried out with great precision, making it clear how these elements contribute to the construction of a specific narrative of the West.
Equally convincing is her reflective use of the concept of myth. Drawing on Segal, Blumenberg, Mason, and Slotkin, Rößig employs the term not as a mere buzzword but as an analytical tool to examine the interrelation of landscape, narrative, systems of value, and cultural imagination. In doing so, the essay demonstrates vividly how comics do not simply depict landscapes but imbue them with norms, ideas, and historical attributions. It is precisely in this interplay of myth, nostalgia, and medial mediation that the study’s particular strength lies.
It is also noteworthy that the essay adopts a clear position toward a highly canonized and widely discussed work in comic history without lapsing into either reverence or blanket criticism. The integration of Don Rosa’s own statements is not merely illustrative but forms an integral part of a nuanced argument. At the same time, Rößig explicitly addresses how the nostalgic revival of the West entails an affirmation of settler-colonial ideologies, thereby generating a tension between fascination and critique that the essay productively sustains.
Overall, this is an argumentatively dense and methodologically reflective study that stands out for its precision, its media literacy, and its interpretative clarity. It demonstrates in a remarkable way how comics can be read as complex cultural artifacts in which myth, image, text, and translation intersect and mutually inform one another.
Laudatio for Emmy Waldman
With “OXO, Spiegelman: Tic-Tac-Toe and the Art of Losing,” Emmy Waldman has written a highly innovative and interdisciplinary article. Starting from a one-pager by Art Spiegelman, this complex and dense study offers insights into the artist’s life, his artistic approach and the cultural meanings of tic-tac-toe, to name only a few, before finally turning to psychoanalytical and philosophical reflections on losing. This approach and the article are not only highly innovative but stand for the author’s expertise and interdisciplinary mastery, coming from comic studies to open to multiple further directions and disciplinary approaches. Particularly noteworthy is the author’s methodological approach of using a sketchbook motif as the starting point for the development of a solid, interdisciplinary theory.
This year’s Schüwer Prize jury:
Iris Haist
Mario Faust-Scalisi
Frederik von Reumont
Laura Glötter
Charlotte J. Fabricius
Comics and Playfulness
