Maggie Gray - Seeing Comics through Art History: Alternative Approaches to the Form

This series concerns Comics Studieswith a capital c and a capital s. It feels good to write it that way. From emerging as a fringe interest within Literature and Media/Cultural Studies departments, to becoming a minor field, to maturing into the fastest growing field in the Humanities, to becoming a nascent discipline, the journey has been a hard but spectacular one. Those capital letters have been earned.

Palgrave Studies in Comics and Graphic Novels covers all aspects of the comic strip, comic book, and graphic novel, explored through clear and informative texts offering expansive coverage and theoretical sophistication. It is international in scope and provides a space in which scholars from all backgrounds can present new thinking about politics, history, aesthetics, production, distribution, and reception as well as the digital realm. Books appear in one of two forms: traditional monographs of 60,000 to 90,000 words and shorter works (Palgrave Pivots) of 20,000 to 50,000 words. All are rigorously peer-reviewed. Palgrave Pivots include new takes on theory, concise histories, andnot leastconsidered provocations. After all, Comics Studies may have come a long way, but it cant progress without a little prodding.

Series Editor Roger Sabin is Professor of Popular Culture at the University of the Arts London, UK. His books include Adult Comics: An Introduction and Comics, Comix and Graphic Novels, and he is part of the team that put together the Marie Duval Archive. He serves on the boards of key academic journals in the field, reviews graphic novels for international media, and consults on comics-related projects for the BBC, Channel 4, Tate Gallery, The British Museum and The British Library. The Sabin Award is given annually at the International Graphic Novels and Comics Conference.

More information about this series at https://link.springer.com/bookseries/14643

Cover illustration: Mark Beyers Duck-Rabbit / John Miers

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG

The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

We would like to thank our commissioning editor and all-round legend Roger Sabin for his support and encouragement for this project and tireless support for comics scholarship in the UK and beyond.

We also owe a great debt of thanks to our editor Camille Davies, and Jack Heeney, Immy Higgins and Liam MacLean at Palgrave Macmillan.

We thank Jessica Bauwens-Sugimoto, Jaqueline Berndt, Felix Giesa and Christina Meyer organisers of the Comics|Histories conference 1617 July 2021; Ian Hague and Hattie Kennedy organisers of the Comics Forum conference on Art and Design 78 November 2019; and the organisers of Storyworlds and Transmedia Universes, the Joint International Conference of Graphic Novels, Comics and Bande Dessine 2428 June 2019, where papers related to this project were delivered and insightful feedback received.

For their feedback we thank our anonymous peer reviewers, and for their support and advice, Josh Rose, Guy Lawley for all matters about print, Jared Gardner and the Caricature, Cartooning and Comics 16201920 crew, and all the other members of the Comics Research Hub (CoRH!!). We also thank all those who submitted proposals for this volume we were unable to include.

We would like to take this opportunity to express our sincere gratitude to all our contributors for their work and commitment, particularly in light of the extraordinary challenges of dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic, and its impact on research and more importantly on everyday life, family, friends and communities.

Maggie would like to thank Ian for being a joy to collaborate with and for putting up with her ropey Wi-Fi. And Ed for everything.

Ian would like to thank Maggie for making editing such fun. And Bettina, Oscar and Sasha for putting up with the piles of comics and dusty art-historical tomes taking over our home.