Comics studies (also comicart studies, sequential art studies[1] or graphic narrative studies)[2] is an academic field that focuses on comics and sequential art. Although comics and graphic novels have been generally dismissed as less relevant pop culture texts, scholars in fields such as semiotics, aesthetics, sociology, composition studies and cultural studies are now re-considering comics and graphic novels as complex texts deserving of serious scholarly study.
Not to be confused with the technical aspects of comics creation, comics studies exists only with the creation of comics theory—which approaches comics critically as an art—and the writing of comics historiography (the study of the history of comics).[3] Comics theory has significant overlap with the philosophy of comics, i.e., the study of the ontology,[4][5] epistemology[6] and aesthetics[7] of comics, the relationship between comics and other art forms, and the relationship between text and image in comics.[4]
Comics studies is also interrelated with comics criticism, the analysis and evaluation of comics and the comics medium.[8]
Matthew Smith and Randy Duncan's 2017 book The Secret Origins of Comics Studies contains a useful overview of early scholarship on comics with standout chapters by Ian Horton, Barbara Postema, Ann Miller, and Ian Gordon.[9] Frederick Luis Aldama's 2019 book Oxford Handbook of Comic Book Studies also contains a wealth of articles on approaches to comics studies and a useful history of the field by Ian Gordon.[10]
^International Journal of Comic Art, volume 7, 2005, p. 574.
^Pramod K. Nayar, The Indian Graphic Novel: Nation, History and Critique, Routledge, 2016, p. 13.
^Benoît Crucifix, "Redrawing Comics into the Graphic Novel: Comics Historiography, Canonization, and Authors' Histories of the Medium", "Whither comics studies?" panel, International conference of the French Association for American Studies, Toulouse (France), May 24–27, 2016.
^ abMeskin, Aaron (2011). "The Philosophy of Comics". Philosophy Compass. 6 (12): 854–864. doi:10.1111/j.1747-9991.2011.00450.x.
^Iain Thomson, in his "Deconstructing the Hero" (in Jeff McLaughlin, ed., Comics as Philosophy (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2005), pp. 100–129), develops the concept of comics as philosophy.
^Meskin, Aaron and Roy T. Cook (eds.), The Art of Comics: A Philosophical Approach, Wiley-Blackwell, 2012, p. xxxi.
^David Carrier, The Aesthetics of Comics, Penn State University Press, 2000, Part 1: "The Nature of Comics."
^Bramlett, Frank, Roy Cook and Aaron Meskin (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Comics, Routledge, 2016, p. 330.
^Cite error: The named reference SmithDuncan2017 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^Gordon, Ian (2019-03-14), Aldama, Frederick Luis (ed.), "Comics Studies in America", The Oxford Handbook of Comic Book Studies, Oxford University Press, pp. 629–641, doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190917944.013.36, ISBN 978-0-19-091794-4, retrieved 2023-07-18
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