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"This book offers the first comprehensive study of the many interfaces shaping the relationship between comics and videogames. It combines in-depth conceptual reflection with a rich selection of paradigmatic case studies from contemporary media culture. The editors have gathered a distinguished group of international scholars working at the interstices of comics studies and game studies to explore two interrelated areas of inquiry: The first part of the book focuses on hybrid medialities and experimental aesthetics ""between"" comics and videogames; the second part zooms in on how comics and videogames function as transmedia expansions within an increasingly convergent and participatory media culture. The individual chapters address synergies and intersections between comics and videogames via a diverse set of case studies ranging from independent and experimental projects via popular franchises from the corporate worlds of DC and Marvel to the more playful forms of media mix prominent in Japan. Offering an innovative intervention into a number of salient issues in current media culture, Comics and Videogames will be of interest to scholars and students of comics studies, game studies, popular culture studies, transmedia studies, and visual culture studies."

The concept of hybrids is widely used in cultural studies and media theory. Cultural products at the intersection of digital games and comic books sometimes show distinct traits of both “conventionally considered distinct” media (Rajewsky 2005) and have consequentially been conceptualized in the definitive work on the subject (Goodbrey 2017) as a hybrid form. Continuing previous work (Backe 2012), this chapter critiques the application of hybridity in this context. Both digital games and comics are most commonly defined by following (even if implicitly) prototype theory. These definitions do not assume criteria that are necessary and sufficient but instead rely on family resemblances. This makes them unusable for conceptual hybridization, which presupposes clearly defined traits. Drawing on principles of knowledge organization and providing an overview of complex examples, this chapter argues that the intersection of digital games and comics is too incongruent to be approached as a coherent cultural phenomenon, and that there is little to be gained for analyses of particular examples by defining them a priori as hybrids.