Oxford Comics Network
About
This network ended in 2023.
Comics and graphic narratives, a form long under-recognised by mainstream publishers and academic institutions alike, have in recent years began to receive the critical attention they deserve. They combine drawn and often painted panels with the written word to create a narrative form that is inherently interdisciplinary, demanding the critical approaches from multiple fields, from literary criticism and visual cultures to art theory and architecture, not to mention the significant body of comics criticism that already exists. Making use of TORCH’s interdisciplinary platform, this network, ‘Comics and Graphic Novels: The Politics of Form’, brought together students, critics and practitioners from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds to explore the power, politics and potential of the comics form.
Though the history of comics practice extends back to the nineteenth century, it has become an increasingly popular and innovative format since the turn of the twentieth-century. Inspired by the works of now canonised comics artists such as Art Spiegelman and Joe Sacco, comics are now deployed across a number of genres to tackle more issues and contexts than ever before. These range from the journalistic non-fiction of Jean-Pierre Filiu and Harvey Pekar to the travelogues of Guy Delisle and Didier Lefèvre, from the autobiographies of Marjane Satrapi and Katie Green to the crime narratives of Brian Wood and Frank Miller. Furthermore, as comics gain the critical recognition they have long deserved, sometimes controversial processes of canonisation are beginning to take place, bringing with them a new set of questions about the binaries of ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture, overlooked mass produced artefacts and subcultural practices, and their evolving relationships with higher education institutions. The TORCH Comics Network embraced comics in all their varied forms, and self-reflexively engaged with the politics of graphic narrative’s current resurgence and institutional verification.
Undoubtedly, then, comics meld different artistic and literary techniques to create new narrative modes that have important cultural, social and political implications. The TORCH Comics Network was designed to cultivate an open, democratic and inclusive environment where these varying implications could be discussed, debated and analysed by students and academics of all levels. Featuring bi-weekly seminars with talks from visiting comics critics and practitioners throughout the Oxford term time, the network aimed to facilitate a new interdisciplinary dialogue about a form that demands more comprehensive and ongoing critical analysis.
The Lead Convenor was Dr Alexandra Lloyd.
Find past social media associated with the network: on Twitter (@OxfordComicsNet), Facebook (Oxford Comics Network), and Instagram (oxfordcomicsnet).
People
Events
Past Events
An Evening with David Lloyd at the Pitt Rivers Museum (October 2016)
Lecture: Comics artist David Lloyd, in conversation about his experience as an artist and the power of the comics form.
Karrie Fransman: 'The Power and Potential of Comics' (October 2016)
Karrie Fransman, Graphic novelist and comics creator, explored the power and potential of one of the youngest and simultaneously oldest art forms of all time.
Roger Sabin: 'The Origins of Comics Criticism' (November 2016)
Roger Sabin, Professor of Popular Culture and author of Adult Comics (2010) and Comics, Comix and Graphic Novels (2001), explored how the new medium of comics was received by critics in the late 19th century.
Jennifer Howell: 'The Algerian War in french-Language Comics' (November 2016)
Jennifer Howell, Assistant Professor at Illinois State University, discussed her book, The Algerian War in French-Language Comics: Postcolonial Memory, History, and Subjectivity (2015).
Michael Goodrum: '"Superman believes that a wife's place is in the home": Superman's girlfriend Lois Lane and the Representation of Women' (November 2016)
Michael Goodrum, Senior Lecturer in Modern History at Canterbury Christ Church University and author of Superheroes and American Self Image: From War to Watergate (2016), discussed the comic book series, ‘Superman’s Girl Friend, Lois Lane’ (1958-1974).
Laydeez do Comics (January 2017)
Event with Sarah Lightman, artist, writer, winner of a 2015 Will Eisner Award, curator of ‘Graphic Details: Confessional Comics by Jewish Women’ (2014), and co-founder and co-director of ‘Laydeez do Comics’, discussed her first graphic novel, ‘The Book of Sarah’, and Sharon Rudahl’s short comic, ‘The Star Sapphire’.
Trump in the Age of Captain America/Captain America in the Age of Trump (February 2017)
with Jason Dittmer (University College London), the author of 'Captain America and the Nationalist Superhero'. The talk traced the outlines of Trump's populism, power, and pugnacious foreign policy in the pages of Captain America comics.
Narrating History Through Comics: Aivali (February 2017)
A seminar hosted by the Modern Greek Seminar and Sub-Faculty of Byzantine and Modern Greek. Comics artist Soloup discussed the paths that modern graphic novels follow when they represent historical events, based on examples from his graphic novel Aivali (2014).
Mexican Comics (February 2017)
An event on Mexican Comics. Comics scholar Ernesto Priego, City, University of London, curator Marisol Rodríguez and comics artist Francisco de la Mora discussed the state of Mexican comics in a panel chaired by Jessica Fernández de Lara, University of Cambridge.
Giving Offence: A 35000 Year History of Visual Satire (February 2017)
Event: with Martin Rowson, British editorial cartoonist and writer Martin Rowson, whose work frequently appears in newspapers such as The Guardian and The Daily Mirror, reflected on his practice of visual satire.
Comics and Human Rights (March 2017)
Lecture
Speakers included:
- Ruth Kelly (Programme Policy Manager of the NGO ActionAid)
- Ben Dix (Senior Fellow at SOAS and founder of the PositiveNegatives project)
- Dominic Davies (University of Oxford)
Chair: Tessa Roynon (University of Oxford)
Notes Toward a Theory of the Global Graphic Protest Novel (May 2017)
Seminar: Charlotta Salmi, University of Birmingham, theorised the graphic novel as a contemporary, global, protest form, from its ability to not only archive histories and strategies of protest, but to reflect contemporary forms of state violence to channel movements for change.
The Greatest Team-Up Story Never Told: New Left / Underground Comix Affinities in the Late 1960s and After (May 2017)
Seminar: Paul Williams, University of Exeter, outlined a series of key moments in which American leftists hailed the underground comix as allies in their political travails.
All-New/All-Different”: Understanding the Marvel Studios Phenomenon (May 2017)
Co-authors of ‘The Marvel Studios Phenomenon’, Martin Flanagan, Mike McKenny and Andy Livingstone, examined Marvel Studios’ organisational principles and identity and explored one or two areas of apparent risk in its portfolio.
Inkfish (June 2017)
Workshop:
A full day workshop designed to bring together budding and experienced comics creators in order to produce a finished piece of sequential narrative-art in just one day, working with a range of artistic materials to complete a comics-based creative project.
Documenting Trauma: Comics and the Politics of Memory (June 2017)
Symposium
Talk: Nicola Streeten, Comics Artist
Concluding with a keynote: Professor Hillary Chute
The symposium sought to address the following questions:
- Why have so many comics and other graphic narratives, the production and publication of which has exploded in recent years, been framed as memoirs or non-fictional documentaries of traumatic events?
- Is there a relationship between the comics form, as distinct from film and written narrative through its inclusion of multiple visual panels, and the remembrance and recovery of trauma?
- How do the interpretive demands made by these disjointed formal attributes impinge on readers of comics and shape their relationship to historical traumatic events?
Unflattening (June 2017)
Speaker: Nick Sousanis, author of ‘Unflattening’ (2015), talked about his use of the comics form to develop new ways of critical thinking.
Divided Cities (June 2017)
Event: ‘Divided Cities: Culture, Infrastructure and the Urban Future’.
A one-day workshop which included a presentation by Josh Neufeld, comics journalist, artist and writer and author of the graphic novel, A.D. New Orleans After the Deluge (2009) with a response from Professor Hillary Chute.
Cartoons and Comics as Social Commentary (July 2017)
Panel:
- Harry Venning, Guardian strip cartoonist
- Neill Cameron and Paul Duffield of Phoenix Comics
- Dominic Davies, British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at Oxford University
The panel debated the importance of comics in the digital age and their radical power in the context of current events.
Savage Messiah (November 2017)
Seminar:
Laura Oldfield Ford, Artist, writer and psychogeographer discussed her work as part of a the ‘Divided Cities II’ workshop at TORCH.
Becoming/Unbecoming (November 2017)
Seminar with comics artist Una, author of Becoming/Unbecoming part graphic memoir and part graphic history, discussed the ways in which comics can offer a powerful denunciation of violence against women and negotiate other kinds of traumatic pasts.
Dr Rosa Luxemburg: Indomitable Cartoon Superhero! (November 2017)
Seminar with Comics artist Kate Evans, author of Red Rosa (2015), a graphic biography of Rosa Luxemburg, and Threads: Tales from the Refugee Crisis (2017), among many other comics, discussed the creative and intellectual processes behind her work.
Rebel Lines: Comics and the Anarchist Imagination (December 2017)
Seminar:
- Frederik Byrn Køhlert, University of East Anglia
- Ole Birk Laursen, Open University
- Matt Jones, University of Toronto
Discussed a recent special issue of the journal SubStance which reflected on comics and the anarchist imagination and how comics have influenced anarchist practices, theory, and history, and how, reciprocally, anarchist thoughts and methods have been reflected in the comics genre from the early twentieth century to the present.
Graphic Narratives of Haiti (February 2018)
Talk with Charles Forsdick, James Barrow Professor of French at the University of Liverpool, who explored the representation of Haiti in comics and graphic narratives, and addressed the production of comic art in Haiti itself.
"Grandville and the Anthropomorphic Tradition" (March 2018)
Talks with comics Bryan and Mary Talbot on "Grandville and the Anthropomorphic Tradition" and "The Red Virgin and the Vision of Utopia".
A discussion of their recent work and artistic practice.
Teenage Dream Tonight: Fantasy, Pop Stardom and UK Girls Comics 1957-64 (May 2018)
Speaker: Joan Ormrod (Manchester Metropolitan University)
Joan examined the ways UK teenage girls’ comics of the ‘50s and ‘60s promoted British pop music in a time when it was attempting to forge its own identity against competition from its more glamorous American cousins.
Beyond Words: Comics as a Tool for Social Inclusion (May 2018)
Speaker: Lucy Bergonzi (Artist)
Paper:
Lucy Bergonzi drew upon her experience as an illustrator for Books Beyond Words to explore the creative process involved in producing books for people with learning disabilities. She reflected on the considerations involved in producing stories without the use of words.
“The voice disappearing”: Comics and Fukushima (May 2018)
Speaker: Fumio Obata (University of Gloucestershire)
Paper:
Fumio Obata has engaged with the recent natural disasters in various regions of Japan through a series of short comic strips.
The Cambridge History of the Graphic Novel (October 2015)
Professor Hugo Frey presented his new book, followed by comics scholar and artist Dr. Paul Fisher Davies, who focused on the functional approach to comics and the affordances and limitations of comics-as scholarship, leading into a more general discussion of Comics Studies.
Black Panther: Blackbird Leys (October 2018)
An event to explore the science and ideas from the blockbuster film Black Panther. Discover Black Panther science and African heritage with University of Oxford researchers and local heroes.
Post-millennial Indian graphic novel (October 2018)
Paper that explored the role of form in Indian graphic narratives and considered how Indian graphic narratives call for (to lesser or greater extents) Indian ways of ‘seeing’ and ‘reading’.
Steadfast Tin Soldiers: The First World War in Story Papers, Comics and Graphic Novels, 1914-2014 (November 2018)
First World War stories rarely featured in the numerous British war comics published after the Second World War, but during the war itself, however, this had not been the case. Story papers – precursors to modern comics – engaged with the war in detail both during and after the conflict. The event examined these representations.
Undergraduate Double Session (November 2018)
Speakers: Jordan Newton, Katherine Kessler
“In fact it’s cold as Hell”: Interstellar and Interplanetary Travel in American Comics of the Early Cold War
Sketching the Untouchable: A Study of The Beatles in Cartoon and Comics
Social Protest and History in Mexican Comics (January 2019)
Speaker: Anne Magnussen (University of Southern Denmark)
Presentation: on how two trends in contemporary Mexican comics use history in order to participate in shaping ideas about Mexican society and identities.
Performing Form and Playing in Print: Comics in Oxford’s Other Paper (February 2019)
Speaker: Maggie Gray (Kingston University)
One of Alan Moore’s earliest comics, ‘St Pancras Panda’ (1978-9), appeared in Oxford community paper the Backstreet Bugle. The paper explored the politics of Moore’s playful, self-reflexive cartooning by attending to the relationship between the strip and the paper it was printed in, in terms of outlook, visual design and material production.
Comics as Architecture (March 2019)
Talk: Enrique Bordes (architect and museum curator)
What if... comics could be conceived as architecture?
Early Holocaust Narratives in Comics (May 2019)
Paper: Long before the Eichmann trail and the ‘Americanisation’ that was to follow, the Holocaust was being explored in horror comics. The paper sought to examine representations of the death camps. In many cases these stories anticipated later forms of public discourse of the Holocaust.
An Evening with Tom Gauld (May 2019)
With Tom Gauld, cartoonist and illustrator and author of the comic books Goliath, You’re All Just Jealous of My Jetpack, Mooncop (a New York Times bestseller) and Baking with Kafka (winner of Best Humour Publication at the 2018 Eisner Awards).
Interviewed by Alex Fitch, the presenter of Panel Borders.
Comics & Travel (July 2019)
Comics & Travel Conference - A one-day event featuring 10 panels and keynote speakers:
- Paul Gravett
- A conversation with Joe Sacco (with Peter Kessler)
Dr Dave Hitchock on Neil Gaimans 1602 and the early modern period (October 2019)
Dr Dave Hitchcock (Canterbury Chirstchurch University)
Longform, a recent collection of Indian comics (October 2019)
A general discussion on Longform, with Samira Nadkarni (who teaches undergraduate English literature in Mumbai, is a working maritime journalist and sub-editor)
Wiccan, Hulking and Batwoman: Gendered Representation in American Superhero Comics (November 2019)
Speaker: Esther De Dauw (University of Leicester)
Two comics adaptations of Zazie dans le métro: from figuration to tradaptation (February 2019)
Ann Miller (University of Leicester Fellow, joint editor of European Comic Art).
A talk that compared two adaptations of Zazie dans le métro into comics format: Jacques Carelman’s, from 1966, and Clément Oubrerie’s, from 2008.
How to make and distribute 45,350 comics about political participation (February 2019)
Lydia Wysocki (Newcastle University)
A talk that explored Lydia Wysocki's experience in making comics as both an educational researcher and a comics maker/editor/publisher.
Batman the Egyptologist: Egyptology, orientalism and museums in the superhero (October 2020)
Speaker: Dr Dan Potter, National Museum of Scotland
One lesser explored area of reception studies within Egyptology is comic books, in particular those of the superhero genre. The talk explored the depiction of Egyptological expertise, its domains and implications within the superhero genre, taking Batman as starting point.
The Couch under the Dome: Spatial Metaphors and the Mother-Daughter Relationship in Bechdel’s 'Are You My Mother?' (November 2020)
Talk | Speaker: Frida Heitland
Dr Joe Sutliff Sanders - Batman: The Animated Series (December 2020)
Speaker: Dr Joe Sutliff Sanders (Cambridge’s Faculty of Education)
Abstract: Dr Sanders shared some of the research from his forthcoming book on Batman: The Animated Series (Wayne State University Press, April 2021)
Captions and Corpses: How to read an EC Comic (February 2021)
Speaker: Professor Qiana Whitted (University of South Carolina)
Prof Whitted drew from her recent book on EC Comics: Race, Shock, and Social Protest.
"Out of the Window and Through the Panels: Violence, Trauma and the Grotesque in the Comic Biography Who is Ana Mendieta?" (February 2021)
Speaker: Dr Jennifer Caroccio Maldonado (Rutgers University)
Dr Caroccio Maldonado presented a narrative that challenged the dominant historical telling of Mendieta’s death and places her as an artist within the larger pattern of men’s violence against women in the world of art and literature.
Black Women in Sequence: Rethinking and Reinking Black Women in Comics (March 2021)
Speaker: Professor Deborah Whaley (University of Iowa)
The talk explored graphic novel production and comic book fandom, focusing in particular on women African descent as deployed in television, film, animation, and print representations of comic strip, comic book, and graphic novel characters.
Humanising Public Health and Challenging Infodemics Online: The Potential of Comics for Evidence-based Communication (November 2021)
Speaker: Anna Feigenbaum (Bournemouth University, UK)
Anna shared Insights on how comics can work to help governments and health professionals reach wider audiences, humanise public health messages and challenge infodemics online.
Visual // Grief: A Talk by Tahneer Oksman (November 2021)
The talk explored graphic narratives focused on grieving experiences and what they can teach us, especially about the connective potential of individual and communal experiences of loss.
Virtual Adventures in Collaborative Comics Translation (December 2021)
During the summer of 2020, the Queen’s College Translation Exchange coordinated a collaborative translation of a comics blog published in Le Monde during lockdown. A presentation by various contributors that discussed the process of this collaborative and virtual translation at a time when everyone was still working from home.
Family Archives and Material Memory in German Graphic Life Writing (January 2022)
Speaker: Dr Alex Lloyd (University of Oxford, UK)
The talk examined two recent German graphic narratives that address family histories shaped by Nazism and the way the texts make use of the material traces that remain.
Erasing Racism, Rewriting Identity? Antiracist Discourse in Quan Zhou Wu’s 'Gente de aquí. Gente de allí. Ensayo gráfico sobre migrantes y españoles' (February 2022)
Alison Posey discussed how Zhou Wu deploys a combination of memes, pop culture, and nuanced sociological research to turn the familiar trope of “I’m not racist, but…” on its head and make an urgent call for the development and implementation of antiracist discourse across all levels of Spanish society.
Queering Marvel’s America: Arnie Roth vs the Censors (March 2022)
Speaker: Holly Roberts
In 1982, the pages of Captain America #268 made history with the introduction of Arnie Roth, the first openly gay character to appear in a mainstream superhero comic. The talk explored how Arnie’s story utilised the censorship of queer representation to instead bring queer people and their struggles to light within Marvel’s understanding of America and the American Dream.
What Makes a Comic Autobiographical? (May 2022)
Speaker: Andrew J. Kunka (Professor of English at the University of South Carolina Sumter)
A talk focusing on the history of autobiographical comics.
Thinking with Comics – Two Workshops (May/June 2022)
Comics offer unique opportunities to communicate ideas and experiences that can be difficult to capture through linear prose. Two workshops that introduced participants to devices comic artists use to play with concepts like space and time, memory, trauma, subjectivity, and the mind.
The Doom Patrol and the Heroism of Strangeness (October 2022)
A seminar
The ethnoGRAPHIC Book Club (Hilary & Michaelmas Terms 2022)
Part of the Oxford Comics Network Winter Programme 2022 combining a love of graphic novels with that of ethnographic practice. (One book per term)
Michaelmas Term in Weeks 3 and 5
Hilary Term 2023 in Weeks 3 and 7 reading Art Spiegelman's Maus.
Oxford Comics Symposium (November 2022)
- Future Tense: Youth Imagining the Future through Comics (Andrea Hoff, University of British Columbia)
- What can Comics teach you about art history? (Tobias J. Yu-Kiener, Central Saint Martin’s)
- Thinking about Sound in Comics (Alexandra Lloyd, University of Oxford)
Between Two Sounds (November 2022)
A multimedia event with music, discussion and a graphic novel on the life of Arvo Pärt
Comics at the Oxford Story Museum (January 2022)
A Conversation with Tom Fickling (The Phoenix comic) and a Private View of KABOOM!
The White Rose Resistance (February 2023)
To mark the 80th anniversary of the White Rose resistance circle’s trials and executions, staff and students at the University of Oxford reflected on the group and its writings through images, words, and song. Joined by soprano Lucy Cox and pianist Tom Jesty.
Gothic for Girls in British Comics (March 2023)
Speaker: Julia Round Associate Professor of English and Comics Studies at Bournemouth University
A talk that explored the Gothic qualities of the 1970s British girls’ comics Spellbound (DC Thomson, 1976-77) and Misty (IPC, 1978-80).
Comics and/as Resistance (June 2023)
A three-day conference with the Oxford Comics Network at the University of Oxford, a research network exploring the power, politics, and potential of the comics form. The conference brought together a wide range of scholars and creators to explore the poetics and politics of resistance within comics and graphic literature.
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