Welcome to the brand new Comics Studies at UNT Blog. This blog is a project of the UNT Libraries, and will include contributions from across the Libraries’ divisions, as well as from faculty, students, and others in the UNT community who share an interest in comics studies.

We include under “comics studies” the scholarly or critical examination of comic books, comic strips, graphic novels, cartoons, animation, films, and other forms of graphic narrative or sequential art. This examination may, but doesn’t have to, conform to traditional modes of scholarly inquiry. We encourage alternate ways of thinking and writing about comics, including interviews, images, videos, or multimedia artwork.  Our scope is purposely broad in order to reflect the interests and range of disciplinary expertise in the comics studies community, as well as the scope of the collections and resources available at the UNT Libraries.

Over the next few months we’ll feature submissions from various members of the UNT community who have an interest in any aspect of comics: theory, history, popular culture, production, creation, collecting, or pedagogy. While we hope to use this forum to highlight both the collections of the UNT Libraries and the work being done by members of our community, we’re also interested in broader conversations around comics and their cultural, artistic, and intellectual value.

Among the topics we hope to include are:

• Comics in the Libraries–highlighting resources, collections, or comics-related events at UNT Libraries.
• Comics Scholarship–overviews of scholarly projects by UNT community members.
• “A Closer Look”–articles offering close analysis of panels or pages for scholarly or teaching purposes.
• Diversity in comics–frank discussions about issues of diversity in comics.
• “Comics in the news”–insightful articles about current events or happenings in the world of comics.
• Interviews with comics scholars, creators, collectors, retailers, or others in the field.
• Critical reviews  of new comics, graphic novels, films, or comics scholarship.

We’re also open to creative uses of media, including videos, artwork, and, of course, comics!

In our next few posts, we’ll offer a retrospective of some of the recent comics-related events here at the UNT Libraries, share some resources we’ve put together for those who want to study comics, and chat with some of our community members about their interests in comics.

Bookmark this page and check back each week for new posts!