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Climate change communication generally comprises disconcerting photography of catastrophes or fearful rhetoric of impending doom that often produce a sense of hopelessness in people. On the other hand, cartoons on climate change combine graphic presentations with humour and try to turn an issue temporally distant, like climate change, into the familiar. Self-identification stimulated by the iconicity of cartoons, along with self-criticism evoked by satire, sarcasm, and humour, help the readers recognise their complicity in the matter. This paper analyses three comic strips published in reputed newspapers in India—Green Humour by Rohan Chakravarty, Ecotism by Ashvini Menon, and The Wildscapes by Deborshee Gogoi – to highlight how cartoons contribute significantly to raising awareness of critical issues like climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The unique affordances and multimodality of the comics medium has been celebated in the literature of graphic medicine for its ability create innovative visal meaphors that help show unique and often difficult to express experiences of illness and disease. While acknowledging the importance and continuing relevance of that work, this article considers what effects might be created when those working in the comics medium decide that not showing a key aspect of the story world is a more compelling way to reveal the truth of the condition they wish to talk about. This form of storytelling, in which an important gap or absence is part of the diegesis, I refer to as 'elliptical testimony'. Considering three different strategies for creating meaning through absence I look at substituting in Spellbound by Bishakh Som, masking in I'm a Terminal Cancer Patient, but I'm Fine by Hilnama, and excluding in And Now I Spill the Family Secrets by Margaret Kimball. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adventure comics were one of the most popular forms of escapism for young people during the harsh period following the Spanish Civil War, until they were replaced by television in the 1960s. The heroes of these comic booklets faced all sorts of threats and monsters, often including dinosaurs, pterosaurs, and other animals from the past which proved ideal for personifying all the horrors that readers had to deal with on a daily basis, so they were destroyed in the cruellest way possible. As these were extinct and largely unknown creatures, the scriptwriters and artists had to use a considerable amount of imagination to fill in their many gaps. A sample of about five hundred pages of Spanish comic booklets featuring different reptiles of the past is analysed here to examine which species were favoured by readers, their role in these comics, and the general palaeontological ignorance that they often revealed. These results are also compared with similar studies of different geographical and temporal scope in order to assess similarities and differences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Comics have been especially vulnerable to censorship. A history of repression has been well documented in the scholarship and is part of fan lore and culture – so much so, in fact, that the topic risks becoming calcified. This paper argues for a broader examination of free speech and comics, the better to understand how the creation and circulation of texts shapes the medium. Here, Neil Gaiman serves as a valuable case study, a creator who not only advocates for free speech but whose intellectual formation depended upon it. Attending to the liberalising forces of mid-Twentieth Century, the paper illustrates how the availability of texts was essential to the formation of Gaiman's distinct comics aesthetic. Moreover, as Gaiman's case suggests, comics depends on free speech not only to protect creators, but to guarantee access to the materials out of which traditions can be built. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Harley Quinn is not only DC's ever-yearning romantic Joker victim – a libidinous, self-centred coarse bumpkin in suspenders, who regularly gets thrashed without mercy – but also an eccentric clown and violent vaude-villain. We argue that the diversity of Harley Quinn's personality as portrayed by different writers and impersonated by cosplay fans is intrinsically connected to the complex and multi-dimensional humour that is associated with the character. Drawing on humour and clown theories, we unpack Harley Quinn's obvious but under-examined humour facets – including her humorous contradictions, meta-humour and clown iconography and routines – with the aim of better understanding her specific comics aesthetics and their humorous momentum both within her fictional worlds and beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Comic storyboards that participants co-create can function as generative data collection tools when integrated into interviews or focus groups in a qualitative-rhetorical study. As a preliminary stage of a study, user testing comic storyboards can help ensure that they are generative and participant-informed, the latter being especially important when researching issues related to participant vulnerability, such as stigma. This article discusses the exigency, user testing, adaptation, and affordances of comic storyboards as data collection or story elicitation tools in a study of provider-enacted HIV stigma. Our user testing of comics storyboards enabled us to implement more responsive, participant-centered, and participatory forms of data collection. Given that the goal of this study is to develop anti-stigma provider training materials in the form of comics, participants' contributions through user testing not only helped us improve our data collection in the main study, but also generated input that informed our conceptualization and drafting of provider training comics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars know little of the inner lives of past children. Discovering a large collection of adolescent art, now older than 80 years old, seems like an archival treasure. James "Jimmy" Kugler (1932–1969) of Lexington, Nebraska, drew more than 120 sheets of comic strips, including retelling the Pacific theater of World War II as a violent confrontation of humanoid "Frogs" and "Toads." The rest of the collection are gangster horror stories and violently humorous, single-panel drawings. What historical context helps make sense of such art? My father died over 50 years ago, and few if any of his classmates and loved ones are still alive. I describe searching through local newspapers, telephone directories, contemporary American propaganda and comic books, movies, just about anything that my father might have read, watched or seen. I treat the project as a microhistory of adolescent rebellion inspired by wartime propaganda and popular culture. What we may want from the past, I argue, contrasts what the past cannot give us. I hope to depict the necessity, and limits, of historical explanation and speculation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Comic books are important sites where norms related to gender, leadership, and democratic engagement are negotiated. In this essay, we examine two comic book depictions of women’s political leadership: Diana Prince/Wonder Woman’s stint as US president, published in 1944, and Barbara Gordon/Batgirl’s tenure as a member of US Congress, published between 1972 and 1980. We contrast Wonder Woman’s tale of democratic fragility and gendered conflict with a Batgirl narrative that promotes a more complex view of women’s political agency and subordinates superheroism to the strength of democratic community. We contend that Wonder Woman #7 reflects the fascist tendencies observed in other Golden Age comics and theorize Überfrau as a counterpart to Übermensch, rooted in an ostensible ethic of protection and authoritarian white femininity. Reading Wonder Woman #7 through the lens of the Überfrau reveals the contours of an antidemocratic white women’s authoritarianism that continues to resonate in twenty-first century politics. An antidote to the reactionary Überfrau is offered by Batgirl, who eschews the role of super savior and puts the responsibility for democratic health into voters’ hands. We conclude by examining how these contrasting visions of women’s political leadership are echoed by women politicians in contemporary political culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The release in 2022–23 of four creative works derived from Les Liaisons dangereuses, on screen and in graphic novel format and in French and English, demonstrates that the novel published in 1782 remains indisputably relevant. However, all these avatars differ considerably from the text on which they claim to be based, in particular by not using the unique epistolary narrative device designed by Laclos. Now seldom read in its original form, and probably poorly understood even by those who do venture to read it, Les Liaisons dangereuses nevertheless still exudes an aura powerful enough to encourage contemporaries to craft versions "adapted" to today's audiences. Rather than belittling or condemning these derivations as facile and inferior to the original, we need to question the ways in which they "re-present" in pop culture a classic whose longevity they continue to ensure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The plot of a narrative is represented in the form of event models in working memory. Because only parts of the plot are actually presented and information is continually changing, comprehenders have to infer a good portion of a narrative and keep their mental representation updated. Research has identified two related processes (e.g., Gernsbacher, 1997): During model construction (shifting, laying a foundation) at large coherence breaks an event model is completely built anew. During model updating (mapping) at smaller omissions, however, the current event model is preserved, and only changed parts are updated through inference processes. Thus far, reliably distinguishing those two processes in visual narratives like comics was difficult. We report a study (N = 80) that aimed to map the differences between constructing and updating event models in visual narratives by combining measures from narrative comprehension and event cognition research and manipulating event structure. Participants watched short visual narratives designed to (not) contain event boundaries at larger coherence breaks and elicit inferences through small omissions, while we collected viewing time measures as well as event segmentation and comprehensibility data. Viewing time, segmentation, and comprehensibility data were in line with the assumption of two distinct comprehension processes. We thus found converging evidence across multiple measures for distinct model construction and updating processes in visual narratives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the perception of comic timing effects in prose fiction and the involvement of this effect in a reader's ability to recognise and appreciate humour. It suggests that the effect of comic timing, generally, results from perceived changes in pace rather than absolute timing. In a written text, a comic timing effect can be constructed linguistically through changes in perceived narrative urgency. In the passages analysed here, this change is from a state of impeded urgency, where textual features that encourage a sense of pace are combined with features that diminish this, to a state where the impediment to urgency is removed. This corresponds with and contributes to the reader's sense of emergence from the text world, a positional shift that encourages their sense of sharing humour with the author. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This email interview with graphic artist Zara Slattery features discussions on the potential of graphic testimonies to document personal afflictions and educate empathetic readers with particular reference to her text Coma (2021). Slattery describes the process of creation and the thoughts, matter and material that went into creating Coma. Slattery reflects on her decision to share her story, artistic influences, the choice of the visual palette, the inclusion of multiple voices to delineate the collectiveness of the illness experience, myth and animal imagery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper seeks to address precarious lives and the politics of urban repair in the city of Mumbai, in Ram V and Anand Radhakrishnan's graphic novel Grafity's Wall (2020), a coming-of-age story about four youths in the city. Through waves of urban restructuring, this paper argues, precarity has emerged as a typical mode of Mumbai's urban life and living. The work investigates the urban underworld of crime, violence, and movements of urban solidarity in the form of care for fellow human beings as well as the city, to form a 'good city'. Since comics can record events that cannot be photographed, this paper aims to use insights from comics studies to understand the concept of precarity and care. Through the characters of four marginal urban youths, the comics show the regeneration of a dilapidated city through practising urban care in the form of youth subculture and urban solidarity movement. Drawing upon theoretical insights from the 'maximum city' and 'static/kinetic city', the paper shows how Grafity's Wall transcends the walled infrastructure of 21st-century urbanism, to advance a call for the right to the city. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While many of the children who are the results of miraculous birth narratives in the Hebrew Bible proceed to lead important lives, the son promised to the Shunammite woman by Elisha in 2 Kings 4:8–37 serves no function but to be born, die, and be resurrected. In this article, the author uses the "Woman in the Refrigerator" comic book trope to examine the treatment of this child in the text as mere motivation for the protagonist of the story. The boy in 2 Kings 4:8–37 is an innocent victim who lives only to die at the whim of the biblical authors/editors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Reading is a basic literacy that plays an important role in the intellectual development of students. Based on various surveys, it was identified that the reading competence of Indonesian students was very low. The research aims was to implement educative comics based on local folktale and examine its effect on increasing reading literacy of in rural rural primary school students. The research is a quasi-experimental design with pre-test-post-test non-equivalent control group design. The participants were 3rd grade elementary school students in rural Karanganyar Regency, Central Java, Indonesia. Sampling was done by purposive sampling and cluster random sampling technique. There were 58 students in the experimental group and 56 students in the control group from 2 different elementary schools, but their qualifications were both in the good category. In learning to read, the experimental group used educational comic books containing local folktales while the control group used texts containing local folktale. Reading literacy competency data was obtained through paper and pencil tests. The data obtained were analysed descriptively and inferentially using t-test. The results of the study prove that there is a significant effect of educational comics based on local folktale on students' reading literacy competence. Local folktale supported by images is suspected to facilitate the availability of context so that the substance of the text is easier to understand. Therefore, teachers are advised to use image support in learning to cover learning losses due to the pandemic, especially in rural schools which experience many obstacles in distance learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A part of the prologue of the Casina which apparently records the play's reperformance sometime after Plautus' lifetime has been universally classified as a post-Plautine interpolation. Closer inspection however reveals not only a system of imagery throughout the prologue but also its numerous thematically relevant correspondences with the imagery and the plot of the play. The correspondences are read as metapoetic allusions to the play's revival and attributed to a single author with the hypothesis that it might be Plautus himself. The "revival" prologue is interpreted as Plautus' humorous anticipation of the reception of one of his last plays and the afterlife of his comic legacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a world, invisible to many, of terminally ill people being cared for full time by a loving family member or friend. These caregivers are living with burdens and pressures that even regular visitors can miss. Stan Mack (Stan Mack in Sandra Lee Fenster's (2000), 'When a Comic Is Taken Seriously,' The New York Times) Care and labour are inextricably linked, particularly in the context of chronic illness, as caregivers often bear emotional, social, financial, and psychological burdens that can lead to negative consequences. While several studies have examined the physical and psychological impacts of care labour on caregivers, the felt experiences of caregiving (such as fear, guilt, and disappointment, among others) have not received adequate scholarly attention. The present article seeks to closely read selected sections from Sarah Leavitt's Tangles: A Story About Alzheimer's, My Mother, and Me, a graphic memoir about Alzheimer's caregiving, to bring to light the complex visceral experiences of unpaid caregivers. Although Tangles is an autobiographical narrative, it also serves as a means to re-examine the conventional notions of care that undervalue and disregard the lived experiences of caregivers. The article investigates how comics medium facilitates the representation of affective forces that shapes the lived experiences of caregivers. Further, the article also examines how exploring such affective realms render a nuanced understanding of care and caring relation. In doing so, this essay not only characterises care as an assemblage of bodies, discourses, performances, and affective relationships, among other things, but also underscores the cultural significance of graphic medicine in critiquing the traditional notions of care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay examines comic book adaptations of the biblical story of Samson within the socio-political context of post-World War II and Cold War America. Challenging the notion that religious narratives in comics are inherently conservative, this study employs a history of interpretation approach to analyze five different adaptations, each illuminating the era's complex cultural landscape. Themes such as distrust, binary morality, the value of duty over individualism, defiant autonomy, and nuanced masculinity are explored, revealing how these comics were not merely religious retellings but cultural artifacts shaped by the broader societal concerns of the late 1940s and 1950s. The paper argues that comic creators were acutely influenced by Cold War-era ideologies and anxieties, thus adapting the Samson narrative to address contemporary challenges. The essay contributes to the understanding of comics as both interpretive tools for ancient narratives and reflective historical documents of postwar America. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Losing the West, Finding Western Worlds" explores how recent critical work in Western American studies breaks apart the region's foundational myths and invites readers and reviewers to revise understandings of this popular, enduring, and protean genre. Reflecting on four studies that interrogate Western American fiction, film, and comic books (two monographs by British scholars Mark Asquith and Neil Campbell; a study of the Black Western by film historian Mia Mask; and a collection of essays edited by Christopher Conway and Antoinette Sol on varieties of comic book westerns produced around the world), the essay considers how this diverse cohort of scholars pursues a common imperative to unlearn "the West" and sets new directions for literary and cultural studies of the region. Through rereadings of the work of writers and actors who fracture and reassemble the heroic settler narrative from the perspective of outsiders, these critics contend, the West can emerge as a place whose stories offer more complete understandings of the past, whose heroes illuminate the political challenges of the present, and whose writers provide the right words for imagining a better future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of comics in education presents significant promise as a tool for enhancing comprehension of educational concepts and advancing scientific literacy. Our research is centred on the development of comics to introduce socioscientific issues (SSI) content to elementary school students, recognizing SSI as a complex societal concern intertwined with science, encompassing diverse scientific and social perspectives. This study adopts a case study approach and places a substantial focus on assessing the challenges faced by students in their utilization. We probed the obstacles experienced by elementary school students when engaging with SSI-laden comics through semi-structured interviews with ten participants. Thematic analysis was applied to scrutinize the collected data, leading to the identification of three primary challenge-related themes: technical complexities of reading comics, unfamiliarity with genre conventions and difficulties in grasping SSIs. Most of our findings were rooted in both the structural aspects of comics (including technical reading and genre) and the complexity of SSI content. These insights offer valuable guidance for our future endeavours and for researchers venturing into the creation of comics for similar educational content. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

Traditionally viewed as static repositories, archives are now seen as dynamic entities capable of continuous reconfiguration and reinterpretation. This study examines how digital practices in comic book archiving maintain historical and emotional integrity, while making these artefacts relevant to contemporary audiences. This paper explores the theories of Wolfgang Ernst, Michel Foucault, Lev Manovich, and others in order to explain digital archiving as a dynamic and interpretive act that shapes historical narratives and cultural memory. Digital restoration of comic books focuses on preserving the original aesthetic and historical context, while recoloring revitalizes visual elements to enhance appeal. Reimagining involves comprehensive reinterpretation and aligns with new media theories in order to offer fresh perspectives on historical narratives. The discussion shows how these practices democratize access to cultural heritage, transforming archives into active sites of cultural engagement and potentiality. By balancing technical precision and interpretive insight, digital artists and archivists aim at ensuring that comic books remain vibrant and meaningful cultural treasures for future generations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Graphic novels can be integral to enhancing curriculum standards. However, comic books, as educational material, still remain controversial in certain education systems, as this medium is regarded by some as sheer entertainment, thereby hindering students' motivation to seek out informal, picture-based literature to read. Graphic adaptation being of great interest to many students, this literary medium may well increase the motivation of young readers to engage in reading and literacy. This paper shows how graphic adaptation can prove to be an effective way to introduce students to classic works of literature, with an analysis of Anne Frank's Diary: The Graphic Adaptation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents an analysis of Neil Gaiman's iconic comic book series "The Sandman." It mentions the unique setting called " The Dreaming" as the primary source of the fantastic elements in the series in both print and on-screen. Netflix's "The Sandman" combines set design with visual and aural effects to create the kingdom at its center. According to Julia Round, The Dreaming is contrasted with various alterities.

Forced marriage is illegal in the United Kingdom and civil legal remedies have been created to protect victim-survivors. However, legal responses have to go hand in hand with education to prevent and end this harmful practice. Comics are a creative educational tool that is accessible, engaging and inclusive, reaching diverse audiences. Comics tell nuanced and sensitive stories about complex experiences, challenging readers to identify, understand and confront injustice, and to act for a better world. Therefore, comics are an effective way to teach teenagers about forced marriage and to support their development as allies to those at risk or already experiencing it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding visual narrative sequences, like those in comics, requires readers to track situational information like the continuity of characters, locations, or events across panels. Yet, some sequences intentionally present incongruities, which may elicit the inference that the narrative presents two separate domains: an established, expected storyworld (primary domain) and an additional context surrounding the incongruous events (auxiliary domain), like a character's imagination, dreams, or memories. This paper describes how these inferences are supported by visual constructional patterns, which emerge across a wide range of narratives, yielding further insight into the fundamental role of graphic and structural cues within visual storytelling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to explore how Confucius is recharacterised in the multimodal translation of The Analects from verbal (analects) to verbal-visual (comics) texts. The focus is on the interpersonal/interactive meaning in Systemic Functional Linguistics and visual social semiotics. Parameters of MOOD and MODALITY are used in discussing the verbal mode in both source and target texts, and the system of CONTACT, SOCIAL DISTANCE, INVOLVEMENT, POWER, AFFECT, PROXIMITY and MASS/AMOUNT are employed in describing features of the visual mode in comics. The quantitative results show that Confucius has been recharacterised from an authoritative teacher in the source text into different images in four comic adaptions, i.e. a detached truth transmitter in Mori [2002. Dongfang Zhidian Shengshu: Manhua Lunyu. Beijing: Jiuzhou Press], an affable wiser in Tsai [2005. Confucius Speaks: The Message of the Benevolent. Beijing: China Modern Publishing House Ltd.], a superior mentor in Zhang [2007. Manhua LunYu. Hangzhou: Zhejiang People’s Publishing House.], and a popularised teacher in Chen [2021. Banxiaoshi Manhua Lunyu. Shanghai: Wenhui Press]. It is argued that the different images of Confucius reconstrued in four translations can be better understood in terms of the context of translation, in which translators’ identity, translation purpose, target reader and historically accepted image of Confucius are finally explored. [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]

One big challenge for teachers today is to provide creative, interesting, innovative, and up-to-date learning media with the aim that students are not bored and can absorb information better. The study aims to develop Christian religious education comics that can be read by all and to test the effectiveness of these creations. This Research and Development program uses the 4D approach, namely Define, Design, Development, and Dissemination. However, at this stage, it is limited to the Development stage. The subjects of this study were a mix of school children and adults with a total of five people. The result of the study shows that: (1) Christian educational comics can be read by all groups; (2) Educational comics that have been developed are suitable for use with a material expert rating scale of 79.29% with proper qualifications, learning media experts are 84% with very decent qualifications, and preliminary trials of 90.11% with very decent qualifications. In conclusion, Christian religious education comics can be read and are appropriate to be used. From these results, prospective teachers are expected to be able to create learning media through various applications and materials related to daily life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This scoping review provides an analysis of the available experiences on the use of comics to promote the health of school children. It was registered in the Open Science Framework (OSF) under DOI: doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/Z5VX6. Seventeen studies were used, including articles, theses and dissertations. The results present the main characteristics of the studies such as year; country; sample characteristics; study design; description of actions and population/ sample. The target population of each selected study was children younger than 10  years. The sample number of the studies ranged between 47 and 881 children. Fifteen studies developed the interventions in schools. 44.4% of the selected studies were published between 2011 and 2020, and the continents with the highest number of publications were South America and North America, with 33.3% each. Regarding the type of study, 55.6% used the nonrandomized experimental method and 35.3% had themes related to specific diseases. The experiences that were considered successful were conditioned to the organizational structure of the use of comic books and how they were offered to school children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Broadly speaking, the term "narrative" is defined as any account of connected events and experiences. Narrative is used in several therapeutic interventions within behavioral health. Narrative approaches can be an affirming process for the patient and can increase a therapist's understanding of their patients' perspectives.1 Unfortunately, there is a lack of medical education and training on narrative approaches, and these remain underutilized in clinical settings. Comics are an accessible medium of expression that can empower the voices of underrepresented individuals and communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Marjorie Liu & Sana Takeda's award-winning speculative comic series Monstress (2015-), protagonist Maika Halfwolf is a woman of many monsters, reminiscent at times of a zombie, vampire, onryō, werewolf, and more. This article argues that the (over)abundance of monster references and other speculative elements are central vehicles for exploring contemporary and historical representations of Asian multiraciality in the United States. Monstress uses the speculative, including monster tropes, to superimpose competing figurations of racial mixture in the United States – from narratives of passing to narratives of treachery to narratives of superheroes. Maika becomes almost incoherent as these meanings are layered upon her character, used to define her story arcs, and visualised upon her body. Liu and Takeda thus draw attention to and unsettle the way knowledge about mixed race Asians is produced and replicated, dreaming of unsignified – of exorcized – multiraciality. At its heart, Monstress uncovers and lauds the agency of mixed race characters within and against the confines of the narratives in which they have long been captured. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article shares a personal history of a blind reader encountering graphic novels at different times in life. Following a brief review of the low-vision accessible comics and adaptation strategies currently available, it offers a critique of the emphasis placed on high-tech adaptation strategies for idealizing "independent" reading practices. In response to the potentially ableist pitfalls of high-tech adaptation, the article offers "co-reading" as an anti-ableist reading practice which enables access to comics for blind and visually impaired readers while encouraging sighted readers to interrogate ableist assumptions about dis/ability. With reflections on Alison Bechdel's Fun Home, the author considers why blind readers might be interested in reading a conventionally visual medium; why the privileging of independent reading works to limit accessibility of comics to blind and low vision readers; and last but not least, how the practice of collaborative comics reading—co-reading—offers opportunities to engage in anti-ableist praxis of reading comics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]