Comics studies (also comic art studies, sequential art studiesInternational Journal of Comic Art, volume 7, 2005, p. 574. or graphic narrative studies)Pramod K. Nayar, The Indian Graphic Novel: Nation, History and Critique, Routledge, 2016, p. 13. 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).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. Comics theory has significant overlap with the philosophy of comics, i.e., the study of the ontology,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. epistemologyMeskin, Aaron and Roy T. Cook (eds.), The Art of Comics: A Philosophical Approach, Wiley-Blackwell, 2012, p. xxxi. and aestheticsDavid Carrier, The Aesthetics of Comics, Penn State University Press, 2000, Part 1: "The Nature of Comics". of comics, the relationship between comics and other art forms, and the relationship between text and image in comics.
Comics studies is also interrelated with comics criticism, the analysis and evaluation of comics and the comics medium.Bramlett, Frank, Roy Cook and Aaron Meskin (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Comics, Routledge, 2016, p. 330.
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. 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.
Theorizing comics Although there has been the occasional investigation of comics as a valid art form, specifically in Gilbert Seldes' The 7 Lively Arts (1924), Martin Sheridan's Comics and Their Creators (1942), and David Kunzle's The Early Comic Strip: Narrative Strips and Picture Stories in the European Broadsheet from c. 1450 to 1825 (1973), contemporary Anglophone comics studies in North America can be said to have burst onto the academic scene with both Will Eisner's Comics and Sequential Art in 1985 and Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics in 1993. Continental comics studies can trace its roots back to the pioneering work of semioticians such as Roland Barthes (particularly his 1964 essay "Rhétorique de l'image", published in English as "Rhetoric of the Image" in the anthology Image—Music—Text)Roland Barthes, "Rhétorique de l'image", Communications 4(1), 1964, pp. 40–51, translated as "Rhetoric of the Image", in: Roland Barthes, Image–Music–Text, essays selected and translated by Stephen Heath, New York 1977, pp. 32–51. and Umberto Eco (particularly his 1964 book Apocalittici e integrati [Apocalypse Postponed]).Umberto Eco, Apocalittici e integrati: comunicazioni di massa e teorie della cultura di massa, Bompiani, 1964. Cf. also: Umberto Eco (1972). "Epilogue", in: Walter Herdeg and David Pascal (eds.): The Art of the Comic Strip, Zurich: The Graphis Press. These works were the first attempts at a general system of comics semiotics.Jochen Ecke, Gideon Haberkorn (eds.), Comics as a Nexus of Cultures: Essays on the Interplay of Media, McFarland, 2010, p. 238.
More recently, analysis of comics have begun to be undertaken by cognitive scientists, the most prominent being Neil Cohn, who has used tools from linguistics to detail the theoretical structure of comics' underlying "visual language", and has also used psychological experimentation from cognitive neuroscience to test these theories in actual comprehension. This work has suggested similarities between the way that the brain processes language and the way it processes sequential images.Neil Cohn, The Visual Language of Comics: Introduction to the Structure and Cognition of Sequential Images, London: Bloomsbury, 2013, p. 1ff. Cohn's theories are not universally accepted, with other scholars like Thierry Groensteen, Hannah Miodrag, and Barbara Postema offering alternative understandings.
Defining comics
Similar to the problems of defining literature and film, no consensus has been reached on a definition of the comics medium, and attempted definitions and descriptions have fallen prey to numerous exceptions. Theorists such as Rodolphe Töpffer, R. C. Harvey, Will Eisner, David Carrier, Alain Rey, and Lawrence Grove emphasize the combination of text and images, though there are prominent examples of pantomime comics throughout its history. Other critics, such as Thierry Groensteen and Scott McCloud, have emphasized the primacy of sequences of images. Towards the close of the 20th century, different cultures' discoveries of each other's comics traditions, the rediscovery of forgotten early comics forms, and the rise of new forms made defining comics a more complicated task.
Composition studies In the field of composition studies, an interest in comics and graphic novels is growing, partially due to the work of comics theorists but also due to composition studies' growing focus on multimodality and visual rhetoric. Composition studies theorists are looking at comics as sophisticated texts, and sites of complex literacy.
Gunther Kress defines multimodality as "the use of several semiotic modes in the design of a semiotic product or event, together with the particular way in which these mode are combined" or, more simply as "any text whose meanings are realized through more than one semiotic code".
Kristie S. Fleckenstein sees the relationship between image and text as "mutually constitutive, mutually infused", a relationship she names "imageword". Fleckenstein sees "imageword" as offering "a double vision of writing-reading based on [the] fusion of image and word, a double vision of literacy".
Dale Jacobs sees the reading of comics as a form of "multimodal literacy or multiliteracy, rather than as a debased form of print literacy". According to Jacobs, comics can help educators to move "toward attending to multimodal literacies" that "shift our focus from print only to multiple modalities". He encourages educators to embrace a pedagogy that will give students skills to effectively negotiate these multiple modalities.
Comics historiography Comics historiography (the study of the history of comics) studies the historical process through which comics became an autonomous art mediumWilliams, Paul and James Lyons (eds.), The Rise of the American Comics Artist: Creators and Contexts, University Press of Mississippi, 2010, p. 106. and an integral part of culture.Waugh, Coulton, The Comics, University Press of Mississippi, 1991, p. xiii. An area of study is premodern sequential art; some scholars such as Scott McCloud consider Egyptian paintings and pre-Columbian American picture manuscripts to be the very first form of comics and sequential art.Scott McCloud, Understanding Comics, Harper Perennial, 1993, pp. 10–15. Another area of study is the 20th-century emergence of the subculture of comics reading, comic book collecting and comicphilia,Alexandre Linck Vargas, A invenção dos quadrinhos: teoria e crítica da sarjeta (The Invention of Comics: Theory and Criticism of Gutters), Ph.D. thesis, Federal University of Santa Catarina, 2015, Abstract: "we stumble upon the inventions of a comics artistry, from the [1960s] on, through conflicts with the art world (Pop Art, Lowbrow Art and exhibitions), through the emergence of an authorial disposal and of an institutionalized comicphilia..." the passionate interest in comic books. A person with a passionate interest in comics is informally called a comicphile or comics buff.Rhoades, Shirrel, A Complete History of American Comic Books, Peter Lang, 2008, p. 66.
The first attempts at comics historiography began in the United States in the 1940s with the work of Thomas Craven, Martin Sheridan, and Coulton Waugh. It was not until the mid-1960s, with the publication of Jules Feiffer's The Great Comic Book Heroes, that the field began to take root. Historiography became an accepted practice in the 1970s with the work of Maurice Horn, Jim Steranko, Ron Goulart, Bill Blackbeard, and Martin Williams. The late 1990s saw a wave of books celebrating American comics' centennial. Other notable writers on these topics include Will Jacobs, Gerard Jones, Rick Marschall, and R. C. Harvey. The 1990s also saw a growth of scholarly work on comics with new books from academics such as Martin Barker, David Kunzle, Thomas Inge, Joseph "Rusty" Witek, and Ian Gordon.
Educational institutions Comics studies is becoming increasingly more common at academic institutions across the world. Some notable examples include: Ohio State University, University of Florida, University of Toronto,Visual Culture Studies – University of Toronto Mississauga. University of California Santa Cruz,Spiegelman, Art. "Comix 101". Lecture. Porter College, University of California, Santa Cruz, April 1992. and San Diego State University, among others.
Beside formal programs and degrees, it is common to see individual courses dedicated to comics and graphic novels in many educational institutions. One of the most notable examples is Boğaziçi University in Istanbul, Turkey: Gazi Mehmet Emin Adanalı is offering several comics courses at Boğaziçi University since 2010 in the Western Literatures and Languages Department that include the history of comics, comics theory, advanced comics readings, and also comics adaptations in the Film and Media Studies Institute . These rigorous, demanding and comprehensive courses are available to all students including those in the postgraduate and doctorate studies, also to international ones through formal exchange programs with other universities.
Sol M. Davidson's New York University thesis, Culture and the Comic Strips, earned him the first PhD in comics in 1959.Sol M. Davidson. Culture and the Comic Strips. Ph.D. diss., New York University, 1959.Sol & Penny Davison Collection – George A. Smathers Libraries.
In France, Jean-Christophe Menu was awarded a Doctorate in Art and Art Sciences in 2011 from Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne after defending his thesis The Comics and its Double: Language and Frontiers of Comics: Practical, Theoretical and Editorial Prospects.Article about Jean-Christophe Menu presenting his thesis at the Sorbonne.Theses.fr: La bande dessinée et son double: langage et marges de la bande dessinée: perspectives pratiques, théoriques et éditoriales.
In 2012, the University of Oregon offered the first Comics and Cartoon Studies minor in the United States.
In the United Kingdom In Britain, growing interest in comics has led to the establishment of a center for comics studies, the Scottish Centre for Comics Studies (SCCS) at the University of Dundee in Scotland, launched 2014, and research is also done at the Comics Research Hub at the University of the Arts London, launched 2015.
Teesside University began offering a BA in Comics and Graphic Novels in 2014, as well as an MA in Comics from 2018. They have since appointed a team of renowned comics practitioners including Fionnuala Doran, Julian Lawrence, Con Chrisoulis, Nigel Kitching and Tara McInerney.