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Background: Research suggests that comics are effective at conveying narratives, promoting literacy, empowerment, and as a therapeutic intervention. However, there is a gap in research on the use of comics in art therapy. Aims: This study explored the potential of comics within an art therapy and narrative therapy framework. The primary research question explored the effectiveness of comics compared to single images in evoking narratives from past problems. The secondary research question examined differences in the representation of an event between the two formats. To address these questions, the process of depicting a past problem as a single image was compared to depicting the same problem as a comic. Methods: This study recruited 15 adult participants through convenience sampling. This was a non-clinical population consisting of individuals with no known psychological difficulties or history of psychological disorders. Participants evaluated the formats through a survey and verbal interview. Quantitative and qualitative data were analysed to determine the formats' effectiveness. Participants' artwork was analysed for unique characteristics the comic evoked. Results: Data analysis indicated participants responded positively to the comic, which seemed especially effective at facilitating the narrative therapy technique of deconstructing. Artwork analysis indicated the comic evoked increased word inclusion, and unique representations of time and movement. Conclusions: These results support the hypothesis that comics are at least as effective than single images in eliciting narratives from past problems, and evoke unique characteristics. Implications: This study suggests the potential of comics in art therapy, encouraging further research and application. Plain-language summary: Research has suggested the effectiveness of comic creation as a means of communication and empowerment. However, there is a gap in research on the use of comic creation as an art therapy intervention. This study explored the potential of comics as an art therapy tool by comparing the process of depicting a past problem as a single image to the process of depicting the same problem as a comic. This was done in order to determine the effectiveness of creating a comic compared to creating a single image in depicting a past problem, particularly in eliciting a narrative from the problem. This study also explored how the representation of an event might differ in a comic versus a single image format. This study worked with 15 adult participants who had no prior history of psychological disorders. Participants first depicted a past problem as a comic and a single image and then completed a survey and a verbal interview comparing these two formats. Results indicated that participants responded positively to the comic format and that it appeared especially effective in helping participants break down the origins, impacts and actions involved in the problem. Examining participants' artwork also suggested that the comic format brought about unique representations of time and movement. The findings of this study suggest that comic or sequential art have potential for use in an art therapy setting. This study hopes to spark further research and encourage the use of comics in therapeutic settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined the kinds of narratives that nine pre-service teachers shared in online collaborative learning discussions about the future of education in relation to global megatrends, namely digitalisation and ecological sustainability. We also analysed how they positioned themselves in the future of education. We used data-driven qualitative analysis and narrative analysis, and we report our findings partly as non-fiction comic strips. We found that the pre-service teachers (1) viewed digitalisation in education through antonyms and ambivalence, (2) emphasised critical media literacy, (3) viewed ecological perspectives through a main and counter-narrative (taking root more deeply vs. not everyone needs to get excited) and (4) emphasised the role of action. In terms of positioning, we found dynamic tensions between passive and active stances. We discuss our findings in light of teacher identity and education for democracy and sustainability. The results can be used as thinking tools in teacher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay studies the representation of the everyday of geopolitical conflicts in Vanni and Welcome to the New World. The graphic novels are situated in war-torn Sri Lanka and Syria, respectively, and document the everyday of their characters. The apparent ordinariness of everyday, especially in states of tension and conflict, has been a prominent trope in comics. The paper examines the properties of comics vis-à-vis their grammar, spatiotopia, and visual-verbal registers to decode a particular medium-specific import in the representation of everyday. Living in zones of conflict requires careful materialize a similar aesthetic of intentional navigation in their reading by creating palimpsestic cartographies, spatiotopic interventions, and image-text tensions of the comics form. These properties make a case for the medium in creating horizontal and non-hegemonic writings of geopolitical conflict. It finds that comics, as a medium, is able to function as a minoritarian intervention in majoritarian representation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Taking the specific example of Paco: Les Mains Rouges (2014; 2017) – a two-volumed sepia graphic novel by Fabien Vehlmann and Éric Sagot – this article explores the potential of the comic format to destabilize carceral histories via the trope of the convict tattoo. The creation of convict records (including the surveillance of tattoos) leaves a rich textual and visual archive that is steeped in power inequalities and absent voices, but also creative potential. By articulating the comic as a critical methodology, this article aims to explore the potential for the format to develop narratives that counter authorized archives and challenge dominant representations of incarceration whilst drawing creative inspiration from historical iconographies of punishment. In its consideration of creative interpretation and potential for engaging with new modes of collecting, it has applications for historical research, media, visual criminology and museum and heritage studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Autobiographical graphic novels have become crucial texts for understanding displacement and transnational identities. This article discusses a long-lost early example of the genre, The Voyage and Adventures of a Well-Behaved German in Kangarooland (Reise-Abenteuer eines Braven Deutschen im Lande der Kangaroo), a series of proto-comic books created circa 1918–1919 by the cartoonist C. Friedrich. A German immigrant to Australia imprisoned in an Australian internment camp during World War I, Friedrich used his self-published comics to document the routines, passions and frustrations of camp life. Drawing on recent scholarship on "POW creativity" as a conceptual lens, we argue that the transnational displacement at the heart of Friedrich's work affirms Kangarooland as a pioneering work that provides a conceptual link with later autobiographical graphic novels and which should lead scholars to question claims that autobiographical comics are an American-born genre. Its origins in displacement and transnationalism, themes that animate so many of the most renowned graphic novels of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, suggest the genre instead developed out of the ability of comics to depict transnationalism and the precarity of displacement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Barbara Brandon-Croft is the first African American woman to have a nationally syndicated mainstream newspaper comic strip. Her comic Where I'm Coming From was first published in the Detroit Free Press in 1989. Two years later it was nationally distributed when it was picked up by Universal Press Syndicate. This interview is a compilation of edited excerpts from two recorded interview sessions conducted with Barbara Brandon-Croft during the summer of 2022, and follow-up sessions that occurred in the fall of 2023. The conversation focuses on how Barbara's experiences during her formative and adult years inspire the world depicted in Where I'm Coming From. We discuss her experiences while growing up in the predominantly Black neighbourhood of New Cassel, Long Island; her father Brumsic Brandon, Jr.'s influences on her career path; her undergraduate years at Syracuse University; and the inspirations behind the content in some of her strips. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article will attempt to answer the question 'Why aren't we talking about the Beano?' by first of all explaining what The Beano is, who 'we' are, and why there is a popular perception, in the UK at least, that the latter should be discussing the former. It will then provide empirical evidence that we are not talking about The Beano and offer a number of explanations for why this might be before finally demonstrating why any of it matters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines two recent Israeli webcomics and explores how each has introduced new modes of graphic communication in Israeli comics. Both are rooted in the Israeli cultural milieu but they reject the forms and substance traditionally associated with Israeli comics and graphic novels. In particular, I analyse Barlev's use of anthropomorphism and Nachmany's use of superhero parody in order to offer novel critiques of Israeli society while also expanding the range and scope of the Israeli comic book and graphic narrative marketplace. I conclude the article by offering a tentative assessment of what it is about webcomics that has facilitated both of these works and how Nachmany's and Barlev's popularity can lead to future novel expressions in Israeli comics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Comic Style Markers (CSM) is a questionnaire that allows a fine-grained description of how people differ in the way they display humor in their daily lives. It includes 48 statements capturing eight interrelated, yet distinct comic styles: fun, irony, wit, sarcasm, benevolent humor, satire, nonsense humor, and cynicism. Despite the independent conceptual roots of these humorous domains, the analysis of the CSM scales' latent structure shows that their empirical distinction needs to be improved. Using the information derived from a competitive latent approach, including confirmatory factor analysis, bifactor analysis, and exploratory structural equation modeling, we proposed and validated a shorter 24-item version of the CSM in a large sample of 925 Spanish individuals (SP-CSM-24). This scale-refinement improved the psychometric differentiation of the eight comic styles without undermining the good internal consistency and the temporal stability of the CSM scores. Strong invariance was held for gender and age groups, and partial scalar invariance for countries also emerged using a sample of 318 U.S. American adults. Structural equation modeling also corroborated a convincing test-criterion validity for the SP-CSM-24, with dispositional expressions of benevolent humor (positively) and cynicism (negatively) outperforming other comic styles in accounting for individuals' well-being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Developing further from a slightly Marxist perspective of the conflict-fuelled era of competing ideologies between the ruling and working classes during the Counterculture era of the 1960s and 70s in the United States, this article positions establishment institutions such as the government, media, and family units under Louis Althusser's idea of the State Apparatus with the Underground Comix movement and R. Crumb's early work squarely against it. This article argues the presence of Dissensus, as put forth by Ranciere, in the form of social, racial, and political anti-ideological motifs within Robert Crumb's Zap Comics. These motifs entered the cultural infrastructure through the medium of comics, stirring up passions and encouraging a necessary discord among classes and groups. Moreover, it discusses the assimilation of many of these anti-ideological motifs into modern mass culture, through a case study of the 2019 TV show The Boys and its opposition to today's State Apparatus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is often argued that 1954 was a very important year for comics in the United States because of the consequences of Fredric Wertham's major work appearance. However, long before that, there was already a multitude of academic publications about comics, children and education. Apart from sensationalist and apocalyptic publications, there are several academic references previous to 1954 focusing on topics related to education, language and comics as an object of learning. Most of these references develop very important empirical work in terms of the size of the samples studied, while others incorporate innovative methodologies for the time, such as factor analysis or qualitative interviews. In part, these advances can be explained by the conjunction of two factors: firstly, the dynamics of the social sciences in the United States, where quantitative fieldwork became commonplace from the 1930s onwards. Secondly, the popularisation of comics with the arrival of comic books, first, and the appearance of Superman, later. This article attempts to develop a systematic review of academic publications published before 1954 in the United States. 35 empirical publications are identified and analysed attending to the author's gender, sample size and number of citations, among other variables. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this interview, Teresa Wong discusses her artistic practice and creative process with particular reference to her graphic narrative Dear Scarlet: The Story of My Postpartum Depression. This interview aims to create a dialogue by exploring the facets of creation and consumption of Dear Scarlet: The Story of My Postpartum Depression. She talks about the process of turning her life experience into a story, her choice of the medium, the art of visual storytelling, visual strategies employed, artistic influences, the magic of combining words and images, the significance of graphic works by women of colour and her ongoing projects among others. The interview is divided into three sections: in the first section, entitled Before the text: Genesis, the author responds to questions related to the author's artistic vision and the creation of Dear Scarlet: The Story of My Postpartum Depression; in the second section entitled The text: form and theme, the author responds to questions pertaining to the formal aspects and themes of the graphic novel and in the concluding section of the interview titled After the text: reception and pedagogy the author responds to inquiries about the social and pedagogical impacts of her work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study aimed to investigate whether preschoolers can recognise the emotions conveyed in panels of the Asterix comic series. The sample consisted of 40 pre-school children (22 boys and 18 girls), aged 52–72 months. They were presented with 8 panels, which in pairs conveyed the emotions of happiness, sadness, fear and anger. Adult raters (N = 109) have previously evaluated these panels as representatively conveying the emotions under investigation. Participants were asked to label the emotion felt by the heroes of each panel and to justify their responses by telling or pointing to the picture which parts of the image conveyed the emotion. Results revealed preschoolers' ability to recognise the conveyed emotions, with older participants presenting greater efficiency than younger ones. Moreover, happiness and sadness were recognised earlier than anger and fear. Finally, content analysis of children's responses revealed that they used for the justification of happiness and sadness mainly the facial expressions of the heroes, while for the justification of anger and fear they relied on the formal properties and the context of the panel respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article shows how Jonson devises a racialized comedy form to navigate the increasingly complex social terrain of early modern London. Reading the avant-garde "comical satire" Every Man Out of His Humour through the lens of Galenic humoralism, I argue that Jonson leverages the physiological discourse within his work to reimagine comedy's definitive purpose as the knowledge-production of social discernment — that is, a cultural system or logic of "reading" the humoral body as a social sign of one's status and interiority. Pretenders of wit, tobacco-fiends, and perfumed courtiers — these humor-ridden figures are racialized through Jonson's comic poetics as immutably inferior readers, inherently lacking in understanding that the rules of social discernment are always fluid, and open to others' manipulation. And conversely, Jonson begins to explore within the play a conception of the ideal, discerning reader as defined by his white, and ultimately undiscernible, corporeality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Individuals' interests, motivations, and knowledge about the environment can affect their behavior toward the environment. This mixed-methods sequential explanatory research study examined the effect of argumentation-supported educational comics used in science lessons on the environmental interest, motivation, and academic achievement of 5th-grade students (N = 290) and explored their experiences. Quantitative data collected in a quasi-experimental pretest-posttest design using validated survey scales indicated that from pretest to posttest, the scores of three variables of experimental groups 1 and 2 were higher than those of the control group. Qualitative findings from semi-structured interviews (N = 36) indicated that students stated that argumentation-supported educational comics attracted their attention and increased their motivation. Also, according to them, comics are very useful in expanding their environmental knowledge. Taken together, this research suggests that designing argumentation via educational comics can boost positive learning processes and outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Upon her introduction as the new Ms. Marvel in 2013, the Pakistani-American superhero Kamala Khan was celebrated, by audiences and critics alike, as a welcome addition to the world of superhero comics. Familiar superhero tropes and ethical dilemmas were given an added twist for Marvel's first Muslim protagonist as the teenage girl strives to reconcile her newfound powers with the moral authorities of her family and her faith. Many comics scholars reserved special praise for the nuanced and unobtrusive way in which the new Ms. Marvel introduces American readers to Muslim culture by following its eminently 'relatable' heroine on her search for moral guidance, whereas others were more sceptical of the extent to which the comic's representation of Muslims can be considered progress. This article probes this ambivalence by analysing the cultural authorities invoked in the first eleven issues of the series. Instead of resolving the critical disagreement, a close reading of Kamala Khan's implicit and explicit appeals to authority allows for a more complicated and richer understanding of the comic's, as well as its eponymous intersectional superheroine's, ambiguity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the best Western comic book series in the field of Franco-Belgian comics, the Blueberry series is widely acclaimed and has generated considerable symbolic capital. Mirroring its success in France and Belgium, this series has also been extensively (re)translated and (re)printed in several countries, such as Spain and Italy. In Anglophone countries, however, this editorial success has not been replicated. The Blueberry series has never been published in its entirety in English, nor has it acquired the symbolic capital that it enjoys in the Franco-Belgian comics field. This article focuses on the American editions of the Blueberry series. By adopting a translational framework based on Jean-Marc Gouanvic's works on the sociology of translation, this paper shifts the traditional focus of Translation Studies from the texts to the critical and often overlooked role of translators and other agents in the international circulation of (graphic) narratives. Based primarily on the analysis of interviews with the American translators and editors of the Blueberry series, coupled with close paratextual examination of selected comics samples, this article investigates the context behind the reception of this iconic Western series in the field of American comic books. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An interesting book that detailly explains the development of webtoons in South Korea in four time periods. From the first appearance of amateur webcomics distributed via the internet (1998-–2002);, transmedia adaptation of webtoons in line with the establishment of online media (2003-–2009);, the growth of mobile phone-based ecosystems accompanied by monetization strategies (2010-–2013);, and efforts to present webtoons in the international arena (2014-present). The author seems to make great efforts to attract readers, especially those who are not familiar with webtoons, by exploiting the cutting-edge capabilities of the digital era in presenting webtoons, as well as and creating a new media ecosystem in all aspects of production, distribution, and consumption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the use of comics as an integrated tool for introducing socioscientific issues (SSI) in elementary school classrooms. To illustrate this, we provide implementation examples from two teachers who facilitated introducing SSI to students using comics. These case studies depict how teachers integrated comics into their classroom settings and combined them with various teaching activities. In this paper, we also emphasize the format of the comics we designed, which starts with an introduction to everyday stories and scientific concepts before delving into SSI scenarios within the comics. Additionally, we have incorporated a conclusion part in the comics to serve as a closing segment. Furthermore, we emphasize the role of SSI scenarios within the comics in establishing meaningful connections between students' personal experiences and real-life SSI scenarios. The discussions predominantly involve private discourse, enabling students to construct their reasoning and perspectives. This approach promotes the development of critical thinking and problem-solving skills, aligning with the ultimate objective of linking the science classroom with societal issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Long ago a child left a dentist office with a comic book on the proper way to brush their teeth. Over time, so many have read comics telling tales of their favorite Marvel hero or what is next for Snoopy and his colleagues or the political scene depicted in a Doonesbury comic strip. Today comics and graphic novels with pictures that look like us center on health topics to get us through a pandemic, being a caring caregiver, eating properly and learning about climate change. It is cliché, but pictures can represent a thousand words, especially when the topics may be complicated, but the images are comfortable for the reader. This Health Literacy column will define graphic medicine with its comics and graphic pathograhics, the elements needed for these tools to create a meaningful health related resource and illustrate it with examples. After an assessment of the services and populations served, health science librarians can use these suggestions and examples for collection development in their medical libraries and/or consumer health collections. The Librarian may even be involved in creating a comic or graphic pathographic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article, situated at the intersection of urban studies and comics studies, seeks to interrogate the nature of urban migration and the lives of construction workers in Simon Lamouret's The Alcazar (2022), a comic based on and in the city of Bangalore. The article begins with a paratextual analysis of the comic, followed by a Lefebvrian analysis of the construction site, to argue that cities like Bangalore are evolving fast "beyond the plan" (Benjamin,2015) to meet the accelerating market pressure, resulting in failed urban planning, infrastructure, and urban crisis. It will further explore what Lamouret's comic does specifically to intervene in the discourse of neoliberal urbanism and challenge that discourse. The article will also analyze the formal specificities of the comics form and the multiple visual tropes Lamouret employed to "visibilize" the migrant workers and to advance their legitimate rights to urban life in the cityscape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the discussion on Comic Book Database is a bibliographic database containing metadata on comic books. Topics include library employees who provide metadata on comic books, as well as helping to pinpoint publication information for the acquisition of comic books; and access to a glossary of terminology with entries such as Title, Company, Issue Number, Date, and the people involved.

"Marvel Comics in the 1970s: The World Inside Your Head" by Eliot Borenstein explores the impact of comic books on American society during the 1970s. Borenstein focuses on five specific writers within the Marvel family who served as a bridge between the iconic Stan Lee/Jack Kirby era of the 1960s and Marvel's dominance in the 1990s. The book analyzes how these writers, such as Steve Englehart and Doug Moensch, used interior dialogue to delve into the psyche of characters and address social and political issues of the time. Borenstein also highlights the influence of these writers on later movements in the comic book industry, particularly at DC Comics. Overall, the book provides valuable insights into the medium of comics and its impact on culture. [Extracted from the article]