Disability has long had a presence in visual culture, but all too often it has been represented as something monstrous and non-normative. Scars and other disfigurements have been used as an easy way to signal a character’s moral depravity, how they deal with painful trauma, or how they’ve been deified into inspirational figures (as Stella…
Comics Academe Review: ‘Supersex’ Puts the Sex Back into Comics Scholarship
Superhero bodies and superhero sexuality are frequent talking points. As on-screen bodies increase muscle, with actors bulking themselves to unattainably immense proportions, the superhero sex drive remains virtually non-existent. It often appears redundant and a contradiction, mainly because the actors portraying superheroes are objects of desirability. But on screen, they are sexless, without desire, and…
A Farewell to Comics Academe Editor Adrienne Resha
This is a very special essay for Comics Academe, and a formal announcement, of sorts.
Humour in Times of Crisis: How Satire Can Lead to Self-Reflection and Social Action
Woman World by Aminder Dhaliwal was introduced to me in March of 2020 by a highly valued friend and mentor, just as the world was locking down for the first time. It has become my comfort read throughout this wild journey we have been on in the past year as the post-apocalyptic collection of skit-esque…
Interview: Javier Olivares on Las Meninas
After reading Las Meninas (translated as The Ladies-In-Waiting and published by Fantagraphics) by Santiago García and Javier Olivares, which I wrote about last year, I knew that I had to try and get an interview with one of the creators of the text to find out how they came up with the idea behind this brilliant…
(A)Round Robin – An Interview with Lauren O’Connor
As a Robin fan (Tim Drake is the best Robin I will not be taking questions at this time), I was very excited to hear about Robin and the Making of American Adolescence, a new book that will be released August 13, 2021 as part of the Comics Culture series being published at Rutgers University…
Comic-Con@Home Day One Roundup: Graphic Novels and Lovecraft Country in the Classroom
As always, the first big day of Comic-Con is dedicated to all things educational. I checked out two panels on July 22: LitX’s Graphic Novels are the New Textbooks and GeekED Rewind 20-21: The True American Horror of Lovecraft Country.
Rereading Bitch Planet in 2021: Basic Bitches & Blackface
I write this on what is the traditional land of the Mississaugas of Scugog Island First Nations. In the first part of this series, I examined the main narrative of Bitch Planet through a critical race theory framework. Critical race theory is a theoretical framework developed by mostly Black American legal scholars and is used…
REVIEW: Women in Marvel Films: They Don’t Know Their Value Yet
Women in Marvel Films answers the question “why aren’t there more superheroines on our screens?” Especially when a comics giant like Marvel has successfully churned out so many films featuring male heroes. And when we do get women characters, what kind of role do they play? What agency do they have? Readers aren’t going to…
Teaching Comics with Comics: On Meghan Parker’s Teaching Artfully
I first heard of Teaching Artfully in the second year of my doctoral program. I was just starting to grapple with the idea of drawing my dissertation as a comic and had reached out to Nick Sousanis, the author of Unflattening and the only person who I knew had drawn their dissertation. Nick led…
Rereading Bitch Planet in 2021: Back Off, Karens
I write this on what is the traditional land of the Mississaugas of Scugog Island First Nations. I was introduced to comic books by my father and brother. Comic books are a traditionally male-dominated sphere and women trying to enter into this sphere experience misogyny, gate-keeping, bias and gendered microaggressions; I know this because I…
Comics Academe: 7th Anniversary Retrospective
The first Comics Academe was published 7 years ago yesterday, on January 28th, 2014. Francesca Lyn was at the time a second-year doctoral student in the Media, Art, and Text program at Virginia Commonwealth University, and has since then graduated and become a well-known figure in comics studies and a mentor to other graduate students…