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Since the first decades of the XXI century, the field of comics production and comics-related investigation has expanded considerably. New genres have appeared, and new research areas have started to select them as objects of scrutiny. The present essay aims at analyzing and comparing two examples of the latest trends in comics production (i.e. graphic novels, autobiographical/autofictional comics and graphic journalism), American Born Chinese (2006) and Primavere e Autunni (2015) by intertwining the fields of media studies, transnational studies, and Chines studies. These works both focus on diasporic identities, problematizing the issue of Chinese cultural heritage and the process of accommodation and synthesis of what are (perceived as) conflictive identities. Meanwhile, these "reality-based comics" allow us to explore the potential of the new trends of comics production and problematize the very notion of visual modality as an analytical tool. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]