European Comic Art

In autumn 2022, we organised an online round table dedicated to the theme of ‘graphic narratives of social justice’ which was supported by a small British Academy grant and hosted by the Centre for the Study of Inequality, Culture and Difference at Nottingham Trent University. While we had both been working on and with comics and graphic novels in different capacities for a number of years, this was the start of an ongoing conversation of which this special issue comprises the next step. The articles presented here work together to set out a series of key themes, challenges, and to some extent, ethical imperatives around the rapidly growing use of comics and graphic novels by researchers, educators, and activists to increase wider understanding, engagement and empathy with marginalised groups and individuals as well as forgotten or overlooked events and histories. Not all the ‘ethnographies’ explored in this issue are produced by academics or with the intention of being read as ethnographies. As such, a further aim is to suggest how comics as research blur boundaries between traditional scholarly disciplines and the hierarchies of knowledge production and dissemination these continue to engender. To help situate the articles, our editorial introduction will consider the wider ‘graphic turn’ within ethnographic research over the past decade, emphasising the connections with other established graphic genres, including autobiographical and documentary comics, together with the important role played by comics within the growing fields of memory and trauma studies. We will then set out what we consider to be the common threads taken up by different authors across the issue – community building, author/artists positionality and reflexivity, translatability, and accessibility.

This article uses the 2022 graphic novel Maroni: Les Gens du fleuve to explore the idea of ethnography as a collective endeavour which unsettles existing, traditional ideas of the anthropologist while also producing a deeper understanding of the Maroni region in the west of French Guiana. The space of the Maroni River offers an invitation to think further about the positionality of the ethnographer. The article focuses first on the challenges the collection presents to existing visual iconographies of French Guiana. It then examines how the positionalities of the artists turned ethnographers are explored within the space of the collection. Finally, it suggests that the future of comics ethnography lies in viewing it as a collective endeavour that aims to bring different artists together via initiatives such as the Mapa Buku Festi, an annual book festival in the commune of Maripasoula that inspired the resulting Maroni collection.

Coordinated by the ARF! Comic Book Festival as fundraising for the Lazzaro Spallanzani National Institute for Infectious Diseases, COme VIte Distanti [Like Distant Lives] is a collaborative Italian comic created by around eighty artists that published daily on social media during the first COVID-19 lockdown (March–May 2020). This article analyses the comic as visual ethnography, by examining: (i) its narrative choices in representing diverse pandemic experiences; (ii) the organisational efforts of ARF!, informed by interviews with director Stefano Piccoli and artist-activist Anna Cercignano; and (iii) the role of audience engagement through social media. We discuss how comics can act as reflexive ethnographic tools and vehicles for activism: witnessing the pandemic's impact on intimate spaces and vulnerable communities, amplifying marginalised voices, and generating tangible support through creative fundraising.

In L'Odyssée d'Hakim, Fabien Toulmé documents the perilous journey of the Syrian refugee Hakim from the suburbs of Damascus to Aix-en-Provence in France, and Hakim's reasons for undertaking this life-threatening endeavour. With his work, Toulmé attempts to intervene affectively in the Western apathy and indifference to the refugee crisis. However, Toulmé’s work is driven largely by a shameful realisation of his own initial lack of interest in the crisis, and not being able to escape his own dominating presence while supposedly giving voice to a refugee. In this article I highlight both the productive qualities of Toulmé’s work and the pitfalls of a staged representation of a perfect refugee, which collides dangerously with the meritocratic belief that one must be virtuous to enter France.

Whatever People Say I Am is series of digital comics challenging stereotypes. Each is informed by academic research with the objective of making research more accessible to the people it purports to represent. The process of gathering of data for each comic is deliberately slow to facilitate conversations and relationships with participants, who, as co-creators, are consulted at each stage of the creative process. Unique to digital comics, the series includes contextual articles – such as interviews with participants – that are linked to panels in the comic. This layering of meaning encourages the reader to evaluate the validity of the representations in the comic and consider if they might have done differently, or not, thereby encouraging deeper engagement with the theme.

This article explores perspectives on childhood through comics-making, inspired by the artist's own childhood war memories. Positioned at the intersection of comics theory, criticism, and artistic practice, it critiques prevailing views on childhood. Leveraging drawing to illuminate overlooked aspects of life, it examines visual storytelling's potential to reveal neglected fragments of childhood experienced during the dissolution of Yugoslavia and the subsequent Yugoslav wars, including the NATO air strike campaign against Serbia in 1999. The methodology diverges from conventional comics-making methods, adopting a visual dialogues approach in narrative construction. Transcending instrumental uses of comics, this research seeks to foster imaginative connections with the world.

Jim Casey and Brandon Christopher, eds, Shakespeare and Comics: Negotiating Cultural Value (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2024). 245 pp. ISBN: 9781350401341 ($99)

Benjamin Fraser, Visible Cities, Global Comics: Urban Images and Spatial Form (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2019). 302 pp. ISBN: 9781496825049 ($35)

Michelle Bumatay, On Black Bandes Dessinées and Transcolonial Power (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2025). 168 pp. ISBN: 9780814259375 ($36.95)