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As comics-based research (CBR) gains wider use, methodological and practical guides have been developed to aid scholars in the creation of research comics. Similar support has not yet appeared for the other key element of scholarly publication: peer review. This article aims to build on the current best practices of CBR methodology to outline an easy-to-use tool which can bridge the gap between research comics and the non-CBR specialists who are called upon to evaluate them. While a peer reviewer may possess the expertise to evaluate the scientific validity of the research claims or results communicated logocentrically, they may feel unprepared to opine on the equally important visual plane due to the perceived subjectivity of graphics as pure art. The Form that Functions Rubric for Research Comics proposed in this article offers clear steps to move through the visual plane, neutral terminology to verbalize essential features of the visual plane, and several examples of the application of this rubric on existing research comics. By empowering reviewers and readers to approach the visual plane as a component of the scholarly argument rather than an aesthetic flourish, the peer review process of research comics can become more ethical and rigorous.

Since their appearance, digital comics have posed many challenges to the world of comic studies. Are they really comics? Should we talk about them as video games or interactive experiences? The questions are many, and they usually stumble on the – apparently – most important question: how can we define a comic? And how do we start analysing them? Scholars have multiplied paths and definitions, features and prototypes, trying to tame such a complex and ever-evolving object, with varying degrees of success. With this visual essay I will focus on – and concretely show – the aspect I believe is the most relevant: the structural relation between simultaneity and continuity, between global and local embedded in comics language. If, as Fresnault-Deruelle put it, 'discontinuity is the basis of comics universe', there will be necessarily some sort of continuum on which this discontinuity can emerge. Normally, this continuum is the white page itself, but with digital comics things get more complicated: the change in physical support calls for a big difference in affordances, new sensory modes make their way in, infinite spaces unfold and so on. Through an interdisciplinary approach and a dive in Peircean semiotics, I hereby suggest how the dialectic between continuity and discontinuity might be a good starting point, on a level of both formal and critical analysis, to tackle an object as chimeric as digital comics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Phenomenon: Transformative learning is a theory in which individuals construct new or revised interpretations of the meaning of an experience. COVID-19 offers a rare opportunity to better understand how individuals respond to and make meaning within the shared context of an extraordinary event. We aimed to examine if and how residents and fellows engaged in transformative learning when caring for COVID-19 positive patients during the initial peak of the pandemic (Spring 2020). Approach: We conducted an interpretive qualitative study to identify themes pertaining to transformative learning. We used semi-structured interviews of residents and fellows who were directly or indirectly involved in the care of COVID-19 positive patients admitted to the inpatient wards or the intensive care units during the first peak of the pandemic (defined as March 11th – May 28th, 2020) at our Mid-Atlantic academic health system. We used the medium of comics to depict select interviewees' experiences during the pandemic as a novel way to represent themes from the interviews. Findings: Three main themes arose from our qualitative analysis. These included "a sense of guilt," "the impact on training," and "venues and processes for reflection." In comparing their experiences with colleagues and friends at other institutions with higher COVID-19 case volume, trainees reflected on how they felt lucky, and this led to guilt, although not necessarily transformation. The impact of COVID-19 on the training environment had transformative potential. Trainees challenged their previously held assumptions on the necessity of various surgeries, in-person visits, and physical examination maneuvers when COVID-19 posed a barrier. Finally, while trainees recalled multiple situations throughout the pandemic when they believed they were engaging in reflection, such reflection did not appear to reach so deep as to alter participants' underlying assumptions until the research interview itself, suggesting that transformation was incomplete. Insights: Our purposive sample of residents and fellows who cared for COVID-19 positive patients during the initial peak of the pandemic made meaning of their experience in multiple ways. The largest shift in worldview due to the pandemic appeared to be related to the instrumental utility of certain common medical practices or procedures. This, in turn, was the most prominent influence on how these trainees felt they would practice in the future, and translated to a shift in how they appraised evidence. However, lack of opportunity for reflection may have adversely impacted the ability for transformation to take place. Given that multiple trainees showed appreciation for the critical reflection venue that was the research interview, academic leadership should ensure similar venues exist during training, even after the pandemic ends. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Modern scientific communication traditionally uses visual narratives, such as comics, for education, presentation of scientific achievements to a mass audience, and as an object of research. The article offers a three-level characterization of the interaction of comic culture and science in a diachronic aspect. Attention is focused not only on the chronological stages of these intersections, the expression of the specifics of the interaction is offered against the background of scientific and public discussions that accompany the comics–science dialogue to this day. Within the framework of the first stage (the appearance and distribution of popular science and educational comics), the characteristics of comics content necessary for the different genesis are highlighted: documentary storytelling, educational practices of learning through drawing, active cooperation with well-known companies and institutions, informativeness and empathic involvement of the young reader in a heroico-romantic narrative of scientific discoveries and mastering nature. With the intensification of interdisciplinary approaches (the second stage), comics are increasingly involved in presenting scientific results within the most diverse fields. Comics-based research is becoming an interdisciplinary method and a widespread practical area with the corresponding formation of scientific tools (applied comics, data comics), forms of interdisciplinary interaction (graphic medicine, ethnography, narrative geography, urban comics, comics journalism, etc.), and scientific publications (“The Comics Grid: Journal of Comics Scholarship”, “Sequentials”). The national format of comics-based research is presented on the example of Ukrainian comics projects (historical, feminist comics). In the genesis of development, Comics Studies have gone from a field of research to disciplinary definitions. In the creation of the metadiscourse of the scientific direction (the third stage), the authors focused on scientific discussions, the formation of academic directions and approaches, and markers of disciplinary self-identification. Emphasis is placed on the unique phenomenon of the simultaneous concordance of various stages of the dialogue between comics and science, on the prolonged replication of successful inventions into modern experience, and the active testing of known narratives at new levels of a scientific presentation.

This paper reflects on the limits and potentialities of “comics-based research” (Kuttner et al., 2020) in marginalised urban contexts, through the interdisciplinary and collaborative perspective of an urban sociologist and a cultural geographer-cartoonist. The analysis starts from the empirical example of the comic book anthology Quartieri. Viaggio al Centro delle Periferie Italiane, which is devoted to five “peripheral” neighbourhoods in Italy and was realised through collaboration between researchers and cartoonists. The paper focuses on the way in which research activities and spatial analyses were influenced by the narrative and stylistic choices dictated by the “spatial grammar” of comics. Through reading the short comics story about the Arcella neighbourhood in Padua, we reflect on how comics allowed us to explore the role of everyday life spaces and of different spatial agencies and spatial structures in the area. Focusing on the role of maps in the narration, the paper further aims to make some relations between graphic and narrative choices in the story and spatial analysis visible. Quartieri is an empirical example that helps us to move beyond the idea of using comics to merely disseminate academic knowledge differently. Despite their prolific accessibility, indeed, comics seem to help us engaging differently with the contemporary debates around the spatial, material and affective turn.

Comics have long been a focus of scholarly inquiry. In recent years, this interest has taken a methodological turn, with scholars integrating comics creation into the research process itself. In this article, the authors begin to define and document this emerging, interdisciplinary field of methodological practice. They lay out key affordances that comics offers researchers across the disciplines, arguing that certain characteristics—multimodality, blending of sequential and simultaneous communication, emphasis on creator voice—afford powerful tools for inquiry. The authors finish by offering some questions and challenges for the field as it matures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This comics-based research (CBR) piece focuses on the methodological awakenings that can result from disruption, insertion, and unruly publics. An anthropologist of childhood focusing on gender and preschool, the author reflects on how as anthropologists we often forget the locations of potential transformative power in our work as we are caught up in the everyday cycle of publication and communication, and how we might awaken to diverse purposes through seeing our purposes differently, if only for a moment. The piece asks us to "try on" scholarship as guerrilla art, and to consider what would happen if our work was an untethered public gift rather than a marooned, transactional experience shaped by the contours of academic business-as-usual. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

'Losing Thomas & Ella' presents a research comic about one father's perinatal loss of twins. The comic recounts Paul's experience of the hospital and the babies' deaths, and it details the complex grieving process afterward, including themes of anger, distance, relationship stress, self-blame, religious challenges, and resignation. A methodological appendix explains the process of constructing the comic and provides a rationale for the use of comics-based research for illness, death, and grief among practitioners, policy makers, and the bereaved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This special collection of Health Promotion Practice introduces critical narrative intervention (CNI) as a key theoretical framing for an asset-based, narrative, and participatory approach to promoting health and addressing social inequality. Innovative digital and visual methodologies highlighted in this special collection—comics and graphic novels, cellphilms and other participatory film, story booths, digital storytelling, and photovoice—are changing the way critical public health researchers and practitioners forge new knowledge, creating new possibilities for interdisciplinary and activist-based inquiry. Public health research and engagement efforts that critically contend with historically repressive structures and intervene through narrative and participatory processes to enact change with and for disenfranchised communities are long overdue. This special collection showcases six CNI projects that promote equity and justice in the context of LGBTQ, nonbinary, and other gender-diverse young people; people who inject drugs living with hepatitis C virus; young women who trade sex; undocumented and formerly undocumented immigrants; and people living with HIV/AIDS. It is our intent that this collection of exemplars can serve as a guidepost for practitioners and researchers interested in expanding the scope of critical public health praxis. Individually and collectively, the special collection illustrates how CNI can create space for the increased representation of historically silenced populations, redress stigma, and provoke important questions to guide a new era of health equity research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]