Multimodal Comics: The Evolution of Comics Studies

Edited Essay Collection

(Madeline B. Gangnes, Chris Murray, and Julia Round, eds. Intellect Books, 2021)

Multimodality is of increasing relevance to human daily life. Comics are a unique and informative site in which to study this concept, as they rely on complex interactions between word and image (Cohn et al, 2017). This collection will bring together leading international research on this theme, developing comics theory and speaking to additional media and disciplines.

Comics have always embraced a diversity of formats, existing in complex relationships to and with other media, and been dynamic in their response to new technologies and means of distribution. This collection explores interactions between comics, other media, and both established and emerging technologies, employing a wide range of theoretical and critical perspectives. By focusing on key critical concepts within multimodality (transmediality, adaptation, intertextuality) and addressing multiple platforms and media (digital, analogue, music, prose, linguistics, graphics), the collection expands and develops existing comics theory and also addresses multiple other media and disciplines.

Over the last decade, Studies in Comics has been at the forefront of international research in comics. This volume showcases some of the strongest research to appear in the journal alongside a selection of new essays. In so doing, it demonstrates the evolution of Comics Studies over the past ten years and shows how this research field has engaged with various media and technologies in a continuously evolving artistic and production environment. The theme of multimodality is particularly apt since media and technologies have changed significantly during this period. The collection will thus give a view of the ways in which comics scholars have engaged with multimodality during a time when “modes” have been continually changing.

We now invite proposals for new essays for this collection that explore aspects of multimodality within comics, including but not limited to:

• Digitisation, online versions, hypercomics
• Sound, animation, enhanced comics
• Intertextuality, adaptation, citation, remediation
• Linguistics, grammar
• Art history, graphic design
• Transtextuality, representation, immersion

We particularly encourage submissions that engage with BAME / BIPOC perspectives and case studies, as we feel that underrepresented voices and topics will spark crucial discussions not only about the subjects themselves, but also about the expansion of our field over the past decade.

Please send enquiries, expressions of interest, and proposals to studiesincomics@gmail.com with the email header ‘Multimodality Collection’.

Abstract (300 words) and contributor biography (100 words) due 1 October 2020.

Completed essays (c.6,000 words) will be due 1 March 2021.