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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]

Background/Aim: Childhood dental trauma poses a prevalent concern, and the limited knowledge of lay caregivers toward the needed immediate actions can adversely affect a child's well‐being. This study aimed to create and validate an educational comic book for lay individuals, designed to guide immediate actions in dental trauma cases, and assess its effects toward enhancing reader knowledge. Methodology: The four‐stage study involved: (1) Literature review and script development; (2) Version 1 of the comic book creation (including illustrations, layout, and design) and Flesch Readability Index (FI) calculation; (3) Version 1 validation by expert judges, assessed by the Content Validity Index (CVI); (4) Version 1 refinement based on the judges' feedback, recalculation of FI, and a pilot test (CVI) involving lay individuals who validated the final material (Version 2). The validation process involved 67 participants, including 13 specialist judges and 54 elementary school teachers. Results: The CVI for Version 1 was calculated at 0.89 (89%), indicating a favorable level of agreement on the evaluated criteria. The FI was determined as 91.1%, indicating a high level of readability. The FI for Version 2 was 92.1% (indicating a very easy level of comprehension). The CVI calculated for the target audience after the pilot test was 0.99 (99%), denoting a substantial agreement among the participants. In assessing the level of knowledge, a significant increase was observed in the rate of correct answers after the comic book was read by lay individuals (p < 0.05), inasmuch as the percentage rose from 50.5% before to 81.2% after reading it. Conclusion: The educational comic book proved valid in terms of readability, appearance, and content. Furthermore, it had a positive impact on gaining the knowledge needed to take the appropriate actions, thus making it a valuable tool for guiding the lay population in cases of dental trauma. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Learner-generated comics are powerful communication tools that allow students to convey complex thoughts and emotions through both verbal and visual modes. In this study, comics were used to explore students' experiences with and perceptions of distance learning (DL) during the COVID-19 pandemic. Female university students were chosen as a purposive sample to discover deep sociocultural meanings in society that could be invisible to men. This study analyzed thirty-two comics created by students using a suggested new analytical framework that draws on systemic functional linguistics theory. The findings were categorized into three dimensions: ideational (who, where, and what), interpersonal (relationships and emotions), and textual (main themes of the comics' stories). Quantitative content analysis was applied to analyze ideational and interpersonal dimensions (frequency), and qualitative analysis was applied to analyze textual dimensions (themes). Thematic analyses were categorized into three themes: challenges, advantages, and disadvantages. The findings were interpreted through a cultural lens in a style that presents the chief subjects that should be carefully considered in future scenarios of digital education. Several implications and future studies are suggested, especially about cultural issues in education, the quality of DL, and addressing the challenges and disadvantages associated with it. [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]

This research is aimed to analyze types of flouting maxim. To find cooperative principle of the implicature through the utterances expressed from the characters in comic strips. The method that will be used in this research is qualitative research design. The researchers use 12 chapters of the tiger comic strips from comics kingdom website as data source from December 01, 2023 to January 24, 2024. Then analyze the conversation that the character had. Likewise, this study attempts to discover the reason for using implicature in the comic strips. The researchers draw a conclusion where the flouting maxim of quantity (32.5%), the flouting maxim of quality (20%), the flouting maxim of manners (25%), and the flouting maxim of relevant (22.5%). The characters of “Tiger” digital comic strips mostly flouted the maxim of quantity since they avoid making others upset about lack of the answer, so they provide a comprehensive explanation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the winner of the 2022 Speculative Fictions and Cultures of Science Book Award, Nicole Starosielski's "Media Hot and Cold," which offers a groundbreaking examination of the intersections between popular culture, technology, and postwar U.S. society. Topics discussed include the exploration of motherhood in science fiction, the need for critical analysis of science fiction and fantasy comics, and the upcoming conference on graphic/visual science fiction.

Despite many philosophical and scientific appeals, physical inactivity, especially in children and young people, remains one of the most serious problems of contemporary civilisation. In our sub‐study of wider research, we focus on the use of Czech fiction and comics by Jaroslav Foglar as a motivational factor to increase readers' physical activity. The respondents (n = 1174) were mostly adults who had spent their childhood or adolescence reading the works of Jaroslav Foglar. These people valued exercise (70%) in this reading, with a high correlation (0.73) to a healthy lifestyle (abstinence from alcohol and smoking). For 57% of the respondents, these values from reading also become an inspiration for application in life (there is a causal link between the degree of awareness of being influenced by the work and the actual application of the physical activity), with even higher values recorded for camping and being in a natural environment, as well as moral behaviour, ethical principles, and helping others. Thus, we can confirm that the inspiration of the fictional world of literature can become a motivational impulse to increase physical activity in the real world, moreover in the context of a very strong awareness of ethical values and moral behaviour. [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]

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 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]

This paper examines The diary from the border: Ventimiglia, an auto‐ethnographic comic based on intensive fieldwork in the Italian border city of Ventimiglia from September to December 2018. The primary objective of my empirical research was to explore the socio‐spatial effects of France's reintroduction of border controls in the area since 2015, mainly targeting irregular mobilities within the European Union (EU). This study presents the auto‐ethnographic comic by delving into two crucial aspects. Firstly, it illuminates the rationale behind utilising an auto‐ethnographic comic as a research output, shedding light on the creative process involved in its conception. Secondly, it explores its composite narrative plot, encompassing three key elements: 'me' (the researcher's personal experiences extending beyond the fieldwork), 'me in Ventimiglia' (the researcher's encounters during the fieldwork), and 'Ventimiglia itself' (the French‐Italian border regime). By fostering a trans‐disciplinary dialogue encompassing migration issues, comics and life course theory, this paper enriches the geographical debate in three significant ways. It recognises the profound impact of the researcher's life events in shaping both research experiences and outcomes within and beyond the fieldwork. Additionally, it underscores the importance of auto‐ethnographic comics in challenging dominant narratives and visually portraying the multifaceted experiences of migration. Lastly, it contributes to the ongoing discussion on visual methods within geography and advocates for using comics as a compelling tool to disseminate research findings, fostering empathy and a comprehensive understanding of migration experiences. [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]

The permanent museography project for the Cuatro Caminos metro station in Madrid features two historical synthesis murals whose main methodological instrument is architectural drawing. In addition, they offer narrative proposals that use resources of the avant-garde comic, together with simultaneous representations of space and time in which the chronological sense of the narrative is even manipulated. This paper analyses the two murals from the conceptual framework of the comic book in terms of the combination of the simultaneous vision of the graphic medium and the partial visions of its contents. Moreover, it ponders on the use of these resources when transmitting complex realities in heritage dissemination works. [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]

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]

Alison Bechdel's graphic memoirs— Fun Home, Are You My Mother? and The Secret of Superhuman Strength —explore the relationship between word and image, both in their form, as comics, and narratively, via Bechdel's musings on self-expression, sexuality, psychoanalysis, and exercise. On each of these sites, she is deeply concerned with the pervasive dichotomies of subject/object, self/other, and past/present. The fraught dichotomy between words and images forms the organizing force for how she writes and draws about all dichotomies, as she disrupts the hierarchy between word and image of Lacan's symbolic order without, as many feminists scholars have, deeming the symbolic order of language inherently patriarchal. Drawing from Julia Kristeva's theorizing of Lacan's symbolic order, Hillary Chute's comics theory, as well as W.J.T. Mitchell's work on the relationship between word and image, I analyze each book sequentially. In her memoirs, Bechdel disrupts the very distinction between word and image. When she recreates book passages and letters, these are not simply transcriptions, but drawings of physical pages, treating words as images. Chute and DeKoven's definition of comics focuses on it as a dual medium, but in Bechdel's memoirs, the relationship between word and image is not as stable as duality. It is a collaboration requiring constant renegotiation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within a multimodal framework, this study investigates the images of Zhuangzi (author of the Chinese Classic Zhuangzi) represented by the front covers of both the comic adaptation 説 Zhuangzi Shuo and its three translations. It is found these covers represent different images of Zhuangzi through processes of recontextualization. In the Chinese adaptation Zhuangzi Shuo, Zhuangzi, while being emphasized as a revered ancient Chinese philosopher, is remolded from an author into a funny speaker absorbed in expressing his thoughts regardless of whether there is any audience. In Zhuangzi Speaks, an English translation published in America, Zhuangzi is repackaged as a friendly interlocutor sharing with readers his thoughts. In The Sayings of Zhuang Zi, another English translation published in Singapore, Zhuangzi is reshaped as a historical figure for detached observation, one frustrated by chaos in reality and investing his thought into his writing. In Lehrsprüche des Dschuang Dsi, a German translation translated indirectly from the Singaporean one, Zhuangzi, while being a historical figure for detached observation as well, is re-reshaped as a reputable Chinese sage, who is old-fashioned but accessible. Differences in these images can be ascribed to diverse perceptions of comics and Zhuangzi in the countries concerned. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on an analysis of Machon fr. 16.258-284 Gow, highlighting the nuances of comic receptions and the interplay between symposia and literary criticism. Topics include the examination of the anecdote's setting at a symposium, its potential for oral performance, and its implications for the relationship between comedy and symposia in ancient culture.

The war in Syria has been communicated to global audiences through images of dead and injured children, decapitated and tortured bodies, and ruined cities. The article shows how news media coverage of the war's impact on the city of Aleppo invoked a Gothic tradition. Drawing on Kristeva and Freud's concepts of the abject and the uncanny, the article argues that the Gothic tradition can further International Relations research on the constitution of Selves and Others. The Gothic Other is constituted through the (Gothic) Self's repulsion, fascination, and desire, and the Gothic tradition revolves around an understanding of the invisible as an in-between space of fear and anticipation. The ability to recognise Gothic themes in an image depends on one's familiarity with the Gothic tradition, hence images are theorised as having a Gothic potentiality. The article focuses on how the Anglo-Saxon Gothic tradition enabled Western readers to identify Gothic themes in news coverage of the war in Aleppo. The article adopts a multimethod strategy including a content analysis of 457 images published by Western news media; a discourse analysis of news stories; an analysis of three Gothic, uncanny iconic motifs; and an author-created comic drawing on Gothic elements from the published photographs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores how the prevalence of deadpan and ironic modes of humour undermines the possibility of clear and stable interpretation in online contexts. Analysing key examples of online deadpan humour through the lens of literary and critical models of irony, I argue that the decontextualisation of deadpan humour in online spaces accentuates the deadpan comic mode's tendency towards ambiguity in ways that hypothetically destabilise any claim to textual certainty. Drawing on the work of Pierre Bourdieu, I propose the 'comic disposition' as a means to theorise how audiences learn to process the comic ambiguity of online deadpan humour, and suggest how the 'comic disposition' can be understood to inform observed tendencies towards distrust and confusion in digital culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes the acceptance and perception of Israeli-Jewish culture in China through Chinese translation of 'The Realist'. It points that most topics Chinese readers could interpret are those shared as general common sense or used in common terminology in all semiotic modes. However, the Israeli-Jewish tradition, literacy and specific practices remained unrecognised for the most part. It argues that the translator's mediation of comic texts is grounded in processes of multimodal analysis that facilitates comprehension of whether and how a message is understood in a certain context. The translator has the task of making up the target readers' contextual deficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this theoretical and provocative paper our aim is to problematize universal ideals, and the closely related belief in educationalization, that frame education today. Inspired by the ethico-political work of Agamben ([2007]. Profanations. New York: Zone Books), and his focus on profane acts of play, and Zupančič’s ([2008]. The odd one in: One comedy. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press) psychoanalytical adaptation of Hegel’s ‘concrete universal’, we illustrate how universal ideals and beliefs often ‘fail’ in comic absurd ways when they are performed in concrete practices. By analyzing different examples, which stem from the research literature, we describe how such ‘failure’ looks. We argue that it is important to engage with the comic absurd as doing so can reveal how educators, politicians, and policymakers contribute to the (re)production of failures within the socio-symbolic (educational) order. However, such an engagement may enable us to ‘fail better’ in education if we also allow ourselves to question, challenge, and perhaps change this order by means of profane acts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay considers the figure of the "user" as an emergent subject of late twentieth‐century US culture, in relation to the World Wide Web and the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act. The user is a subject position that is historical in the sense that use relations have always determined social formations within capitalism, but it has been newly energized in contemporary modes of capitalism after digital computing, and newly weighted in contemporary renderings of the nation‐state as service provider. This essay turns to a cultural moment in which a privatized user subject was coming into formation, using comic books of this moment to find the user figure and its stories. The DC Comics archive might not seem the most likely place to find answers to these concerns. But superhero origin stories are always about becoming user in late capitalist imaginaries. Superheroes learn to use their histories to reproduce the world they want. The then newly inaugurated DC Comics character Oracle, aka Barbara Gordon (formerly Batgirl), is becoming a wheelchair user and a computer user. Reading Oracle's 1990s user origin stories, this essay attends to scenes of wheelchair and computer use to work out a theory of user history and user time emerging in 1990s US culture. The comics reveal that the process of becoming user is always intersecting with the processes of becoming a racialized, gendered, classed, (dis)abled subject. They also open up the possibility for other affordances: becoming user as a process which can be torqued in its unfolding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is an intimate connection between education and providing students with the qualities that societies aim to develop in their members. When we look at it in this context, it is seen that it is aimed to raise individuals who have the equipment that the society wants with the achievements of the Social Studies course, which is a part of the education system. In the process of achieving this goal, teaching environments and material availability are also important. Based on this fact, the importance of comics, which is one of the effective materials, in the process of achieving these goals draws attention. The main purpose of this research is to get students' opinions about the use of educational comics in the process of transferring the achievements of the Social Studies course to the students. The research was carried out on 20 students studying in Hatay Antakya in the 2021-2022 academic year. In terms of being a qualitative study, the case study technique was preferred in the research. The answers to the questions in the semi-structured interview form of 20 students in the Social Studies course were analyzed by subjecting them to content analysis. In the light of the data obtained as a result of the research, the visuals and dialogues in the comics: Gain speed reading skills, gain reading habits, gain reading motivation, improve reading comprehension skills, gain problem-solving skills, gain empathy skills, reveal the importance of empathic feelings, effective speaking and active listening. It has been concluded that it makes the lesson understand the importance of it, increases the rate of active participation in the lesson, makes the lesson fun and positively affects the ability to listen to the lesson effectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Visual Language Research Corpus (VLRC) is a dataset of annotations of 376 stories from comics from the United States, northwestern Europe, and East Asia, along with analysis of the complete 10 year run of the Calvin and Hobbes comic strip. Comics were annotated using 254 constructs from Visual Language Theory, a framework focusing on the linguistic and cognitive structures involved in visual and multimodal information. These annotations include analysis of panel's attentional framing structure and filmic shot scale, the situational changes across panels, page layouts, multimodality, visual morphology, and path structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The question of Tibetan refugees retains a unique matrix in world history. Though many Tibetans have fled from their motherland and settled in various parts of the world, they still believe themselves to be Tibetan citizens. Aaniya Asrani, through her three-part graphic non-fiction series Portraits of Exile, looks at the lives of Tibetans in exile residing in Bylakuppe. It is a geoGraphic novel that combines the spatial qualities of comics with geographical methods and is the first graphic narrative produced in India concerning the Tibetan experience. Asrani uses landscapes as fabrics for expressing the truth of refugeehood, and cultural trauma recalled through individual experiences. The paper attempts to look at Asrani's mapping project from the perspective of Geohumanities; her use of maps, structuring of landscapes, and assertion of identities is looked upon using the lens of narrative cartography, cultural geography, and place identity, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article looks at three graphic memoirs and considers the specific ways in which the comic medium allows for the representation of complex and non-verbal interactions between the members of a family. The selected texts show how the sequencing of panels in a comic can depict the unspoken affects that circulate within a family unit. The comic medium seems to be apt for representing the distributed consciousness of a family, and also for splintering a character temporally so that older and younger versions of the character can be put into dialogue with each other in a family context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper analyses the susceptibility of the youths against political-religious polarisations as presented in the Indian (Hindi) superhero comic books. The focus will be on the character, Doga (Raj comics) as he appears in the comics from 1996 to 2019. This analysis will be carried out within the framework of deconstruction applied via political discourse analysis. The paper will read these titles - Doga Hindu Hai (Doga is Hindu) series, Doga ko Gado (Bury Doga) etc. These texts deal with political issues that are coloured with religious tones portraying situations in which youths usually go astray. However, the response of the protagonist to these challenges, channelises these discontents sometimes through his own example and sometimes through appeal and yet sometimes through use of force, into positive outcomes. These artistic responses offer both the wish fulfilment to mitigate the atmosphere of peril and incites alternate reactions to the quotidian (and generally political) answers. The paper is divided into the following sections – No country for the young, Comics and crisis, People and publication, Origins, Politics and youth delinquency, Poverty and delinquency, Catch 'em Young, Colours of riot, Dalit and Doga and conclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic is undoubtedly one of the most significant bio-socio-economic crisis of the early 21st century. Amid the fear, anger, hope, anxiety, disorientation, and uncertainty of the times, Graphic Mundi published COVID Chronicles: A Comics Anthology (2021), and Distant Connections published a comic series titled The Lockdown Lowdown. COVID Chronicles, edited by Kendra Boileau and Rich Johnson, includes 64 mini-comics from 70 contributors and offers an insight into the various lived experiences of the pandemic. Similarly, The Lockdown Lowdown series comprising of two zines and a special issue (on women and COVID-19), features artists from diverse backgrounds and geographical locations (such as Europe, the USA, and China), exploring the challenges and possibilities within the new normal. Taking these cues, Kendra Boileau and Michael Green share their experience of anthologising COVID comics through an email interview. The interview is divided into two parts. In Part A, titled 'Suddenly our world changed completely,' Boileau and Green answer questions common to both of them, and in Part B, titled 'When can we give grandad a hug?' they answer questions specific to the anthologies in discussion while also giving the reader a peek into their creative/editorial processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the interchangeable relationship between three author figures in the nineteenth individual instalment of Neil Gaiman's popular Sandman comic book, titled 'A Midsummer Night's Dream', arguing that just as this metafictional story blurs the boundaries between theatrical/comic book fiction and reality, it also portrays an abstraction of authorship between Shakespeare, Morpheus, and Gaiman, as each figure blends into one another while influencing the shape of the narrative; as a result, each of these authors demonstrates the tangible and transformative power of a singular storyteller. Drawing from Gaiman's history of portraying Shakespeare in Sandman – and his goal throughout the series of enshrining single impactful authorship through his fictionalised take on Shakespeare – I will propose that in actuality, all three authors engage in a cyclical creative relationship with one another, which affects the perception of the comic book story's origin, with each author acting as inspiration for one another on both a diegetic and metatextual level. This culminates in the story's visual layout and meta-performance of Dream, in which their three authorial influences become momentarily indistinguishable, complicating Gaiman's ideal of single authorship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates single-panel cartoons portraying official corruption in China's longest- running state-owned cartoon newspaper Cartoon Weekly (Fengci yu youmo). A total of 433 cartoons are identified as relating to corrupt officialdom between 2012 and 2019 in the wake of Xi Jinping's anti-corruption signature policy. In contrast with the individualizing critique of political cartooning in liberal democracies, the corpus of corruption cartoons investigated in this article is argued as a didactic form of visual schematization in a pseudo-self-critical discourse typically buttressed by verbal reading instructions. To support this claim, the article addresses its politics of visual discourse by employing Peircean hypoiconicity, consisting of direct resemblance, diagrammatic schematization and metaphoric displacement. Accordingly, the article identifies three major features of corruption cartoons as anonymization of direct resemblance, visual schematization of policy and metaphoric displacement of conventional symbols. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Development of digital era encourages creative industry to continue grow by raising many issues, nowadays many are found in various visual media using anti-hero characters as main character. Anti-hero is hero character who has traits and characters that deviate from depiction of a hero in general (Bagaskara, 2021). They have the same goal of doing good but in a way that may sometimes be wrong or unjustified (Wahyudi, 2020). This character is very appropriate to express human imperfection which in life always has advantages and disadvantages. In contrast to superhero characters who are too perfect to be used as exemplary figures in real life. The media that will be used is comic with theme entitled "The Second Shot" where main character who is half human and alien will be faced with many choices that can determine the future of the world, besides being disappointed or having hidden hatred as well. From past events from both human side who had deceived him and aliens who only took advantage of him. The use of comics media as visual media is based on fact that target audience is younger generation between ages 18-25 years who are more interested in reading picture books than those that contain too many words. [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]

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]