CFP: A conference for PhD students on in-between spaces, translations, and intermedial perspectives
CFP: Graphic Gastronomy Bandes Dessinées, Comics, Mangas and Food Cultures through History
“International Public History”-issue on “Teaching History Through Comic Books” published
International Public History: Teaching History Through Comic Books
Einleitung by Amie Wright and Christine Gundermann
De Gruyter
2024
ISSN: 2567-1111
Christine Gundermann and Amie Wright have co-edited this new special issue on “Teaching History Through Comic Books” and have contributed and supervised numerous articles that attempt to present comics research and the use of comics as broadly and interdisciplinarily as possible. Some contributions are already open access, others are yet to be released as such:
Introduction by Amie Wright and Christine Gundermann
“The Graphic Anne: Anne Frank Comics as Transnational Lieux de Mémoire” by Christine Gundermann
“Illustrating History: April 25th and Its Legacy in Portuguese Comics” by Alexandra Lourenco Dias
“Teaching History Through Comic Books: New Opportunities for Public and Visual History” by Amie Wright
Visualizing the ‘Godmothers’ of the First World War: About the perks of writing a hybrid theses in image and text” by Aliénor Gandanger
Roundtable Conversation – ‘Making the Invisible and Private Seen and Public: On the Potentials of Graphic Medicine for Public History’, a discussion by Matthew Noe, Ian Williams, Soha Bayoum and Eugenia Garcia Amor
Graphic Collections and Resources
- Katharina Hülsmann: Yoshihiro Yonezawa Memorial Library of Manga and Subcultures
- Barbara Margarethe Eggert: nextcomic Festival (Austria)
- Felipe Gómez-Gutiérrez: Latin American Comics Archive (LACA) – Carnegie Mellon
- Felix Giesa: Comic Archive at Goethe-University Frankfurt, Institute of Children’s and Young Adult Literature Research
- Astrid Böger: The Center for the study of Graphic Literature @ University of Hamburg
- Graphic Medicine Collection – Harvard Medical (Boston, USA)
Workshop “Comics as Educational Media in the 20th Century: International Perspectives”
Next January, the DFG-funded research project “Comics as Educational Media in the Federal Republic of Germany, 1960s-1980s” will hold an international final workshop in Hamburg on the topic of “Comics as Educational Media in the 20th Century: International Perspectives”, co-organized by Sylvia Kesper-Biermann. Participation is possible, but due to the limited space available, please register by December 31, 2024 with Anna Strunk (anna.strunk (ät) uni-hamburg.de).
Organizers’ Note:
“At present it seems like common sense that comics can be a beneficial tool for educational purposes. Their ability to explain and illustrate even complicated topics as well as their motivational impact seem to make them perfect to “loosen up” the classroom. However, in the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), this approval of comics only came after a phase, during the 1950s, of vehement rejection and fear with regard to the supposed dangers of comics. They were accused of causing analphabetism, increasing juvenile delinquency and keeping children away from “good literature”. Similar to the FRG, other countries experienced their own struggles and discussions surrounding the use of comics in educational contexts. The upcoming workshop “Comics as Educational Media in the 20th Century: International Perspectives” aims to focus on these developments in East Germany, Poland, France, Great Britain, the USA and Japan. Six speakers will shed light on comic reception and usage in education in their countries of research, opening up a room for comparison and discussion.
Monitor 78: New Publications on Comic Books
Monitor is an irregularly published overview of publications from the previous six months that may be of relevance to comics studies scholars. The introductory texts are the respective publishers’. Do you have suggestions or information on new releases that have been overlooked and should be introduced on our website? Please let us know via email: redaktion@comicgesellschaft.de.
→ See previous Monitor posts.
Medieval Spaces in Comics: Affect and Ideology
Palgrave Studies in Comics and Graphic Novels
Elizabeth Allyn Woock
Palgrave Macmillan
November 2024
Publisher’s website
“This book proposes a conceptual framework for analyzing and discussing narrative space in comics. Building on Mieke Bal’s phenomenological approach to cultural analysis (2002), Gaston Bachelard’s Poetics of Space (1996), and Geraint D’Arcy’s use of the mise en scène to describe space in the comics format (2020), this book layers in a nuanced approach to the depiction of medieval environments through affect theory and poetics to interrogate the staging of ideas which are associated with the medieval period. Considering the action, setting, and story – as well as affect, atmosphere, and mood – medieval space is contextualized as an ethically complex poetic image. This book also explores the communicative possibilities of the comics format, and seeks to show rather than just tell the methodologies of space in comics-based research through illustrating key sections of the text.”
Innovations in Digital Comics: A Popular Revolution
Elements in Publishing and Book Culture
Francesca Benatti
Cambridge University Press
October 2024
Publisher’s website
“Le premier ouvrage scientifique traçant une histoire des créatrices de bandes dessinées pour une (re)valorisation du matrimoine.
Peut-on encore raconter l’histoire de la bande dessinée sans parler des femmes qui y ont contribué ? Pourtant, jusqu’à tout récemment encore, les « Maîtres du neuvième art » étaient des hommes, occultant ainsi l’apport des créatrices.
L’ambition de cet ouvrage est de restituer aux créatrices de BD la place qui leur revient, et de repenser l’histoire du neuvième art en s’attachant à des trajectoires, des sujets et des œuvres silenciés. S’appuyant sur les recherches menées par le groupe de travail « Les Bréchoises » en 2020-2022, le livre offre de multiples ressources permettant de dégager les contours d’un matrimoine de la BD en Europe et dans les Amériques, depuis le XIXe siècle jusqu’à la période contemporaine. Consacré à l’évolution esthétique, discursive, politique et genrée, il met ainsi en lumière le travail des coloristes, dessinatrices, éditrices et scénaristes ayant contribué à ce médium. Leur présence dans le champ professionnel de la BD en France, en Espagne, au Canada, aux États-Unis, en Allemagne, en Argentine, au Mexique, au Brésil et en Belgique constitue un héritage vaste et complexe dont les composantes, contrairement aux idées reçues, se comptent par centaines. Dès lors, l’ouvrage invite à relire l’histoire de cette forme d’expression dans une approche inclusive et transversale qui traverse les siècles et les espaces.”
Singular Sensations: A Cultural History of One-Panel Comics in the United States
Michelle Ann Abate
Rutgers University Press
September 2024
Publisher’s website
“What do The Family Circus, Ziggy, and The Far Side have in common? They are all single-panel comics, a seemingly simple form that cartoonists have used in vastly different ways.
Singular Sensations is the first book-length critical study to examine this important but long-neglected mode of cartoon art. Michelle Ann Abate provides an overview of how the American single-panel comic evolved, starting with Thomas Nast’s political cartoons and R.F. Outcault’s groundbreaking Yellow Kid series in the nineteenth century. In subsequent chapters, she explores everything from wry New Yorker cartoons to zany twenty-first-century comics like Bizarro. Offering an important corrective to the canonical definition of comics as “sequential art,” Abate reveals the complexity, artistry, and influence of the single-panel art form.
Engaging with a wide range of historical time periods, sociopolitical subjects, and aesthetic styles, Singular Sensations demonstrates how comics as we know and love them would not be the same without single-panel titles. Abate’s book brings the single-panel comic out of the margins and into the foreground.”
British Newspaper Strips: A Contextual History
Palgrave Studies in Comics and Graphic Novels
Adam Twycross
Palgrave Macmillan
August 2024
Publisher’s website
“This book explores the history and development of the British daily newspaper strip. It considers such strips within their political, commercial and societal contexts and fills in a crucial section of publishing history that has been largely overlooked by both comics and newspaper studies to date. Beginning with an examination of the role of the image within British publishing in the final decades of the nineteenth century, the book moves on to explore the arrival and development of the first daily strips. It considers the links that bound these strips to surrounding cultural forms, their relationship to their host newspapers, and their position within the wider structures of the emerging popular press. Subsequent chapters cover a range of topics including the impact of the world wars, the anti-comics campaigns of the 1940s and 50s, and how changes to British publishing and wider society shaped the newspaper strips of the final decades of the twentieth century. Culminating with a discussion of the way in which strips became established within the broadsheet press from the 1960s, the book builds to provide a detailed overview of the twentieth century development of this most neglected cultural form.”
Critical Approaches to Horror Comic Books: Red Ink in the Gutter
Routledge Advances in Comics Studies
By John Darowski, Fernando Gabriel Pagnoni Berns (Hgs.)
Routledge
August 2024
Publisher’s website
“This volume explores how horror comic books have negotiated with the social and cultural anxieties framing a specific era and geographical space.
Paying attention to academic gaps in comics’ scholarship, these chapters engage with the study of comics from varying interdisciplinary perspectives, such as Marxism; posthumanism; and theories of adaptation, sociology, existentialism, and psychology. Without neglecting the classical era, the book presents case studies ranging from the mainstream comics to the independents, simultaneously offering new critical insights on zones of vacancy within the study of horror comic books while examining a global selection of horror comics from countries such as India (City of Sorrows), France (Zombillénium), Spain (Creepy), Italy (Dylan Dog), and Japan (Tanabe Gou’s Manga Adaptations of H.P. Lovecraft), as well as the United States.
One of the first books centered exclusively on close readings of an under-studied field, this collection will have an appeal to scholars and students of horror comics studies, visual rhetoric, philosophy, sociology, media studies, pop culture, and film studies. It will also appeal to anyone interested in comic books in general and to those interested in investigating intricacies of the horror genre.”
Petrochemical Fantasies: The Art and Energy of American Comics
Daniel Worden
Ohio State University Press
August 2024
Publisher’s website
“In Petrochemical Fantasies, Daniel Worden reveals the entwined history of comics and fossil fuels in the United States. From the 1840s to the present, comics have depicted the power, pollution, and rapid expansion of energy systems—especially the explosive growth of coal and oil. In the 1930s, some of the first comic books were the gas station giveaways Gulf Funny Weekly and Standard Oil Comics. And in recent years, comics have become one of the major sites for visualizing life after oil, a striking reversal of the medium’s early boosterism.
Surveying the work of acclaimed artists such as Nell Brinkley, George Herriman, Jack Kirby, Winsor McCay, and R. F. Outcault and recovering little-known works, Worden advances a new history of American comics in the Anthropocene. From late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century editorial cartoons and superhero comics that visualize our modern energy culture to contemporary comics grappling with climate crises, Petrochemical Fantasies places comics, environmental humanities, and energy studies in conversation with each other to unearth the crucial but overlooked history of comics’ place in US energy culture.”
Construire un Matrimoine de la BD: Créations, mobilisations et transmissions des femmes dans le neuvième art, en Europe et en Amérique
Marys Renné Hertiman, Camille de Singly (Hgs.)
Les presses du réel
June 2024
Publisher’s website
“Le premier ouvrage scientifique traçant une histoire des créatrices de bandes dessinées pour une (re)valorisation du matrimoine.
Peut-on encore raconter l’histoire de la bande dessinée sans parler des femmes qui y ont contribué ? Pourtant, jusqu’à tout récemment encore, les « Maîtres du neuvième art » étaient des hommes, occultant ainsi l’apport des créatrices.
L’ambition de cet ouvrage est de restituer aux créatrices de BD la place qui leur revient, et de repenser l’histoire du neuvième art en s’attachant à des trajectoires, des sujets et des œuvres silenciés. S’appuyant sur les recherches menées par le groupe de travail « Les Bréchoises » en 2020-2022, le livre offre de multiples ressources permettant de dégager les contours d’un matrimoine de la BD en Europe et dans les Amériques, depuis le XIXe siècle jusqu’à la période contemporaine. Consacré à l’évolution esthétique, discursive, politique et genrée, il met ainsi en lumière le travail des coloristes, dessinatrices, éditrices et scénaristes ayant contribué à ce médium. Leur présence dans le champ professionnel de la BD en France, en Espagne, au Canada, aux États-Unis, en Allemagne, en Argentine, au Mexique, au Brésil et en Belgique constitue un héritage vaste et complexe dont les composantes, contrairement aux idées reçues, se comptent par centaines. Dès lors, l’ouvrage invite à relire l’histoire de cette forme d’expression dans une approche inclusive et transversale qui traverse les siècles et les espaces.”
From Gum Wrappers to Richie Rich: The Materiality of Cheap Comics
Neale Barnholden
University Press of Mississippi
June 2024
Publisher’s website
“Between the 1930s and the invention of the internet, American comics reached readers in a few distinct physical forms: the familiar monthly stapled pamphlet, the newspaper comics section, bubblegum wrappers, and bound books. From Gum Wrappers to Richie Rich: The Materiality of Cheap Comics places the history of four representative comics—Watchmen, Uncle Scrooge, Richie Rich, and Fleer Funnies—in the larger contexts of book history, children’s culture, and consumerism to understand the roles that comics have played as very specific kinds of books. While comics have received increasing amounts of scholarly attention over the past several decades, their material form is a neglected aspect of how creators, corporations, and readers have constructed meaning inside and around narratives.
Neale Barnholden traces the unusual and surprising histories of comics ranging from the most acclaimed works to literal garbage, analyzing how the physical objects containing comics change the meaning of those comics. For example, Carl Barks’s Uncle Scrooge comics were gradually salvaged by a fan-driven project, an evolution that is evident when considering their increasingly expensive forms. Similarly, Watchmen has been physically made into the epitome of “prestigious graphic novel” by the DC Comics corporation. On the other hand, Harvey Comics’ Richie Rich is typically misunderstood as a result of its own branding, while Fleer Funnies uses its inextricable association with bubblegum to offer unexpectedly sophisticated meanings. Examining the bibliographical histories of each title, Barnholden demonstrates how the materiality of consumer culture suggests meanings to comics texts beyond the narratives.”
Cartoons and Antisemitism: Visual Politics of Interwar Poland
Ewa Stańczyk
University Press of Mississippi
June 2024
Publisher’s website
“Antisemitic caricatures had existed in Polish society since at least the mid-nineteenth century. But never had the devastating impacts of this imagery been fully realized or so blatantly apparent than on the eve of the Second World War. In Cartoons and Antisemitism: Visual Politics of Interwar Poland, scholar Ewa Stańczyk explores how illustrators conceived of Jewish people in satirical drawing and reflected on the burning political questions of the day. Incorporating hundreds of cartoons, satirical texts, and newspaper articles from the 1930s, Stańczyk investigates how a visual culture that was essentially hostile to Jews penetrated deep and wide into Polish print media. In her sensitive analysis of these sources, the first of this kind in English, the author examines how major satirical magazines intervened in the ongoing events and contributed to the racialized political climate of the time.
Paying close attention to the antisemitic tropes that were both local and global, Stańczyk reflects on the role of pictorial humor in the transmission of visual antisemitism across historical and geographical borders. As she discusses the communities of artists, publishers, and political commentators who made up the visual culture of the day, Stańczyk tells a captivating story of people who served the antisemitic cause, and those who chose to oppose it.”
Écouter la bande dessinée
Benoît Glaude
Les Impressions Nouvelles
May 2024
Publisher’s website
“Lire une bande dessinée c’est tout à la fois la regarder, la manipuler, la sentir… et l’entendre, même dans une soi-disant « lecture silencieuse ».
Mais avez-vous déjà entendu raconter une bande dessinée à voix haute ? Ceux qui lisent parfois des livres à des enfants se douteront qu’il ne s’agit pas d’une expérience hors du commun. À côté de la lecture partagée, on connaît des fictions sonores jouées à plusieurs voix, avec musiques et bruitages, adaptées de bandes dessinées. Du 78 tours à la Lunii, en passant par le livre-disque, un certain nombre d’objets de la culture enfantine rendent ces expériences audio réitérables à volonté.
Aujourd’hui, les séries audio en streaming et les dramatiques radio en podcasts, comme les lectures publiques lors de festivals, performent la bande dessinée pour des publics de tout âge. Tandis que le son cherche sa place dans la bande dessinée numérique, la bande dessinée trouve la sienne dans l’offre florissante des livres et séries audio.
Cet ouvrage propose d’écouter ces mises en voix, en se plongeant dans leur histoire, des années 1930 à nos jours.”
Shaolin Brew: Race, Comics, and the Evolution of the Superhero
Troy D. Smith
University Press of Mississippi
May 2024
Publisher’s website
“Shaolin Brew: Race, Comics, and the Evolution of the Superhero looks at how the comic book industry developed from a white perspective and how minority characters were and are viewed through a stereotypical white gaze. Further, the book explores how voices of color have launched a shift in the industry, taking nonwhite characters who were originally viewed through a white lens and situating them outside the framework of whiteness. The financial success of Blaxploitation and Kung Fu films in the early 1970s led to major comics publishers creating, for the first time, Black and Asian superhero characters who headlined their own comics. The introduction of Black and Asian main characters, who previously only served as guest stars or sidekicks, launched a new kind of engagement between comics companies and minority characters and readers. However, scripted as they were by white writers, these characters were mired in stereotypes.
Author Troy D. Smith focuses on Asian, Black, and Latinx representation in the comic industry and how it has evolved over the years. Smith explores topics that include Orientalism, whitewashing, Black respectability politics, the model minority myth, and political controversies facing fandoms. In particular, Smith examines how fans take the superheroes they grew up with—such as Luke Cage, Black Lightning, and Shang Chi—and turn them into the characters they wished they had as children. Shaolin Brew delves into the efforts of fans of color who urged creators to make these characters more realistic. This refining process increased as more writers and artists of color broke into the industry, bringing their own perspectives to the characters. As many of these characters transitioned from page to screen, a new generation of writers, artists, and readers have cooperated to evolve one-dimensional stereotypes into multifaceted, dynamic heroes.”
Announcement of the winners of the Martin Schüwer-Publication Prize 2024
We are delighted to announce the winners of the sixth Martin Schüwer-Publication Prize for Outstanding Comics Research 2024!
This year, the comic essay From Giotto to Drnaso: The Common Well of Pictorial Schema in ‘High’ Art and ‘Low’ Comics by Bruce Mutard has been awarded the Martin Schüwer Prize. The essay was published in the volume Seeing Comics Through Art History: Alternative Approaches to the Form in the Palgrave Studies in Comics and Graphic Novels series edited by Ian Horton and Maggie Gray.
On behalf of ComFor and the AG Comicforschung (Committee for Comics Studies of the Society for Media Studies GfM), this year’s jury would like to congratulate Bruce Mutard on his exciting contribution and is delighted to award him the Martin Schüwer Publication Prize for Outstanding Comics Research 2024!
Laudatio for Bruce Mutard:
With his paper on the ever-contested relationship between comics and art history, Bruce Mutard takes the title he has chosen literally. The question itself is not necessarily new. However, the form he found is extraordinary. His academic paper is a comic that reflects on art styles through art history by showing them directly on the page. It stands out because it aims to provide a detailed reflection of iconography and the visual resemblance between classic arts and comics on the level of form.
Mutard tells us a story about the representation of art through time by including classical paintings in the scenery and panels full of artworks, as well as repeatedly switching the drawing style. However, the visual information is not only part of the story the comic tells, it is also part of the academic side of the article. Mutard provides full transparency in meticulous notes and references to different sources and artists who inspired his style choices—breaking new ground on how to include visual information into an academic argument.
Mutard’s paper is a significant contribution to the controversial debate on the roots of comics within the history of the arts. The answer to this question is as apt as simple. The question is not whether historical works of art are themselves comics, which is a well-introduced strategy for a retrospectively applied identification of any sort of art that (seemingly) refers to modes of sequentiality as comics. In this perspective, there is eventually nothing beyond the comic form; hence, comics have always existed. That way, the comic medium can be understood as the end of a long-lasting teleological development in art history.
Contrary to this assumption, Mutard suggests a much more coherent and subtle response to that question. According to him, the decisive question is whether comics could have existed at the respective historical point in time. Hence, the question is not simply one of resemblance, like the sequentiality on the Column of Trajan or the Bayeux Tapestry, but that of cultural preconditions. Which cultural setting makes comics possible? And, particularly, on which cultural techniques do comics depend? Mutard finds a historical link in Susan Vogel’s concept of the “Western Eye,” developed for Vogel’s work on the Western perception of African Baule art. Mutard’s essay applies Vogel’s concept strictly and straightforwardly, which produces inspiring results. Overall, this marks the essay as an essential contribution to the understanding of the comic medium, which will, theoretically as much as methodologically, certainly inspire the further development of comics studies.
Honorable Mention:
In addition to the main prize, the jury also awarded an honorable mention this year. This goes to Helene Bongers for her essay Depictions of women in Catherine Meurisse’s ‘Modern Olympia’: A bande dessinée as feminist art history. The article was published in 2023 in the thematic issue “La bande dessinée au féminin : tendances, thèmes, styles” of the journallendemains. Études comparées sur la France (47. Jahrgang, Nr. 185) and is available on Academia.edu.
Laudatio for Helene Bongers:
Helene Bongers besticht in ihrem Artikel „Frauendarstellungen in Catherine Meurisses ‚Moderne Olympia‘: Eine bande dessinée als feministische Kunst-Geschichte“ durch eine präzise Sprache und theoretische Weite bei gleichzeitig differenzierter Analyse am Comic. Der Artikel untersucht, wie in „Moderne Olympia“ Frauen und weibliche Körper dargestellt und angeschaut, welche kunsthistorischen Tropen aufgegriffen und welche zurückgewiesen werden. Dabei arbeitet Bongers die feministische Perspektive des Comics auf zwei kanonische Kunstwerke aus dem Musée d’Orsay in Paris heraus und bindet die gesellschaftliche und kunsthistorische Rezeption der Kunstwerke mit ein, welche durch Sexismus und Rassismus geprägt sind. Damit wählt Bongers einen intersektionalen Zugang zum Werk, dem eine differenzierte und eingehende kunsthistorische Analyse zugrunde liegt.
The laudations for both award-winning contributions were read out during the award ceremony at the 19the ComFor-Annual Conference (October 23-25, 2024) in Groningen.
This year’s Schüwer Prize jury:
Jörn Ahrens
Anna Beckmann
Barbara M. Eggert
Iris Haist
Vanessa Ossa
“Das kleine Handbuch der Comicreportage” published
Das kleine Handbuch der Comicreportage
Augusto Paim
Christian A. Bachmann Verlag
September 2024
112 pages
ISBN 978-3-96234-092-6
Following from Augusto Paim’s dissertation published in 2022, Die Comicreportage: Journalistische Erzählung in Comicform (also with Bachmann), this ‘spin-off’ offers a kind of practical guide to journalistic approaches in comic form.
Blurbs:
“Eingängig, berührend und einfühlsam: Die Comicreportage ist eine neue und faszinierende Form der journalistischen Arbeit. An konkreten Beispielen und mit vielen Tipps aus der Praxis führt Augusto Paim in die Comicreportage ein. Schritt für Schritt erklärt er, wie sie entsteht und was bei der Arbeit zu beachten ist. Dabei wendet er sich nicht nur an die Schreibenden, sondern denkt auch immer an die Zeichnung. Drei komplette Comicreportagen machen die Erläuterungen noch anschaulicher.”
“What Was, Is, Will Be Comic Studies – to Us?” (ComFor’s 18th Annual Conference Proceedings)
Christina Meyer, Vanessa Ossa & Lukas R.A. Wilde (eds.):
Was war, ist, wird Comicforschung – für uns? 10 Jahre ComFor e.V. als eingetragener Verein
Gesellschaft für Comicforschung (ComFor),
1. ed., Oktober 2024
240 pages, 109 figures
open access
ISBN 978-3-9826707-0-6
DOI 10.17605/OSF.IO/PDWFH
Edited by Christina Meyer, Vanessa Ossa, and Lukas R.A. Wilde, with contributions by Daniel Stein, Jaqueline Berndt, Stephan Packard, Andreas Veits, Myriam Macé, Daniela Kuschel, Arnold Bärtschi, Lukas R.A. Wilde, Martin Wambsganß, Dietrich Grünewald, Barbara M. Eggert, Ralf Palandt, Christine Vogt, and Iris Haist.
See the Conference Program of the 18th Annual ComFor-Conference (2023)
The (German) Society for Comic Studies (ComFor) has been established on February 11, 2005, in Koblenz. Its purpose was and still is the promotion and networking of interdisciplinary research on the medium of comics in German-speaking countries, on German-language comics and other forms of graphic narrative, on works originating from German-speaking countries or translated into German and, more generally, all scholarship on comics at German, Austrian and Swiss universities and other educational institutions. On April 11, 2014, ComFor was reconstituted as “ComFor e.V.” at Goethe-Universität in Frankfurt am Main. In 2024 we, i.e. the members of ComFor, can therefore look back on the tenth anniversary as a legally registered association. With currently about 167 active members from various countries (from Italy, Austria, Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium, and the US, amongst other) and different subject areas and disciplines such as Literary Studies, Art History, Media Studies, Sociology, Japanese Studies, and many more, the society has grown since 2014 to one of the largest, internationally recognized institutions of interdisciplinary comics research. Over these past ten years, the field has become very diversified, professionalized, and evolved. Comics Studies often utilizes the strengths of these institutionally barely anchored, but, all the more, lively interdisciplinary and international fields in order to focus – and reflect – on the diversity of the specific perspectives involved.
To mark the tenth anniversary of our society as a registered organization, we have dedicated ourselves to a critical (self-)reflection of this period of comic research. The preparatory 18th ComFor annual conference, which was intended as a kind of ‚think tank‘ for the members of our society, took place from December 11–13, 2023 at the Waldschlösschen Academy Foundation, Gleichen, which is near Göttingen. Such reflections must necessarily remain highly selective and deliberately avoid any claim to completeness or representativeness. “What Was, Is, Will Be Comic Studies – to Us?” is therefore not meant exclusionary, in the sense of a linguistically, geographically, or nationally constructed ‘we,’ but addresses quite literally the members of our Society for Comics Research, with their personal, often interdisciplinary, meandering research biographies, interests, and focal points.
The first part of our collection, “Reflection Papers,” offers three spotlights from esteemed colleagues who have been working in the field for several decades and who were asked for their personal reflections on their individual ‘research biography’ – with freely chosen focal points. The main section, “Current Research Perspectives,” offers insights into contemporary questions, topics, and concerns that are motivating newer members and early career scholars of our society in particular within their current research projects. The next section “Focus on Comic Exhibitions” sheds light on the often-neglected issue of comic book exhibitions and their means of communication. Our anthology is rounded off by 80 pages of documentation from the republished ComFor-ComicForum.org-columns, published between 2014 and 2023, a total of 36 texts by 9 authors, which record and narrate the past ten years.
Download Full Publication (40 MB)
Continue Reading: Table of Contents and Individual Contributions
comfor_comicforschung new on Instagram
The ComFor editorial team is pleased to expand the digital presence of the Society for Comics Studies (ComFor) and now also be represented on Instagram as comfor_comicforschung. Supervised by Laura Glötter, the ComFor Instagram account will be filled with appealing and relevant content from the world of comics and comics research. ComFor is intensifying its social media activities in a fruitful cooperation with the Committee for Comics Studies of (GfM), represented by Barbara M. Eggert. This collaboration, which just began at the GfM annual conference, promises a multifaceted and informative presence on Instagram. The team has developed a varied concept that offers new insights into various aspects of comics research and culture every Sunday:
“Frisch erschienen”: Presentations of new comics studies publications
“Comic Fact”: Concise insights into the world of comics
“Comic Empfehlung”: Curated reading recommendations (suggestions welcome and can be sent by email to redaktion@comicgesellschaft.de!)
“Panelplausch”: Interactive exchange with the community
The initiative aims to promote dialogue between comics researchers, enthusiasts, and the interested public, while at the same time communicating current developments in comics research. We cordially invite anyone interested to follow our Instagram presence and actively participate in an exciting discourse about comics.