Editorial

It is fifteen years since the journal was founded and comics studies has developed substantially in that time. Most of you will have seen changes in the content of the journal through new scholars and scholarship that broaden our understanding of the comics medium. The journal has expanded from our earlier two issues a year to six, and the readership and subscriptions have increased. The growth in our page count and articles published annually has added to the number of downloads and citations which, in the third quarter of 2023 stood at 85,000 downloads/views. You can get a fuller picture of the publication figures here https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?show=journalMetrics&journalCode=rcom20. Routledge also supports authors with information in the website showing how you can widen the impact of your paper through (blatant!) self-promotion on social media, conferences, Open Access, blogs – information can be found here: https://authorservices.taylorandfrancis.com/publishing-your-research/choosing-a-journal/journal-metrics/?_gl=1*1tk5i6k*_ga*MTkxODIyMDI3Ny4xNjI3NjcwNDQ0*_ga_0HYE8YG0M6*MTcwMjIyMzg2NS45MC4xLjE3MDIyMjQwNzUuMC4wLjA.&_ga=2.208415698.1169981719.1702223866–1918220277.1627670444#faqs.

Articles in this issue cover themes of environment, landscapes, cultural inequalities analysed using the formal qualities of comics to illustrate cultural, ecological inequalities and trauma. Taken overall, the papers in this issue reflect and comment on similar themes.

The first articles deal with cultural intersections of comics and the comics form with identity, conflict, ecology and ethnicity. Sathyaraj Venkatesan and Krishnan Revathy’s ‘Drawing Eco-sickness: Industrial Disaster Comics, Postmemory, and The Minamata Story: An Eco Tragedy’ analyses the ecological disaster of the Japanese village, Minamata, through the accounts of witnesses. It relates the post affects and trauma of the tragedy through the landscape and memory. Bhavya Rattan’s ‘Bhimayana- Unveiling Reality of Caste System in India through Gond Art’ takes an unusual approach as it focuses on how the Indian folk art of the Gond tribe is used to illustrate Srividya Natarajan and S. Ananad’s graphic novel: Bhimayana. Rattan argues that Gond art can be used to better understand the inequalities of the caste system through comics multimodal form.

The following papers analyse how identity is rationalised and performed in comic book characters. There have been several papers in this journal and elsewhere on Ms Marvel. This issue welcomes another paper, ‘Ms. Marvel and Those Persian Guys: Unpacking Kamala Khan’s Layers of Crazy,’ based on the cultural conflicts of the heroine’s Pakistan and American identities. Analysing the first eleven issues of the series, Hans-Georg Erney shows how ‘the implicit and explicit appeals to authority allows for a more complicated and richer understanding of the comic’s, as well as its eponymous intersectional superheroine’s, ambiguity.’ Where Erney’s paper analyses psychological identity, Anthony F. Trevor’s “On the Level: A Dramaturgical Approach to the Comics Character“analyses how that identity is performed. Performative identity is the basis for studies of subcultures, gender, ethnicity or race, using the work of Erving Goffman (1959) and Kenneth Burke (1972). Trevor uses the work of acting teacher and researcher, Earle Gister, to show how using dramaturgy to analyse comics characters (or actors) can potentially reveal creator’s unresolved anxieties.

The next papers deal with readership. The first about the continuing attraction of the long lived character to the reader, the second to the ideal reader. The problems of the long-running character are explored in Joshua Rene Cavazos’s ‘The Lack and Unfulfilment of Daredevil: Born Again’. Cavazos takes yet another approach to characterisation in using Jacques Lacan’s notion of lack to explain how the reader becomes involved in the long-running character’s inability to find completion in their lives. Shilpa Shirishkumar Tanna & Geetha Bakilapadavu examine the ideal reader in ‘Sarnath Banerjee: Audience, Craft and Creative Politics’ using interviews with Banerjee and reader’s responses in social media to show how the narrative evolves from this interaction. The comics form, especially the speech bubble and the use of sound is discussed in Ryan Twomey ‘Graphic Sound and Silence: Chris Ware’s Aural Depiction of Alienation and Isolation.’ Twomey shows how sound and lack of sound evokes a sense of isolation and alienation. Interestingly, Twomey shows how the sequential and reverse absence of sound can draw readers attention to the silence.

There are three interviews in this issue. Shrabanee Khatai and Seema Kumari Ladsaria interviewed the Indian comics artist Appupen in ‘On demystifying the Consumerist Bubble and dismantling the obsession with Superheroes: An Interview with comic artist Appupen’ and, as in the papers described above, Appupen discusses how he speaks to his readership.

Laboni Das and Sathyaraj Venkatesan explore the societal and individual affects of dementia in the work of several creators. In ‘Of Comics and Dementia: An interview with Nigel Baines, Rebecca Roher, and Liza Futerman’ they examine the role of caregivers and how graphic medicine is so effective in presenting these issues. Graphic medicine is also discussed in Augustine George, Aswin Prasanth & Rajesh Panhathodi’s ‘Darryl Cunningham Interview.’ This rare interview explores Cunningham’s work as a health care assistant and his subsequent work that deals with political and economic inequalities.

The issue finishes with a book review by Olga Michael: ‘Reframing the Perpetrator in Contemporary Comics: On the Importance of the Strange, by Dragos Manea.’ Dragos Manea’s work deals with history and cultural memory and he won the Sabin Award for Comics Scholarship (2017).

We hope you enjoy this issue!