About Comics Forum

Comics Forum was established in 2009 as part of Leeds’ annual sequential art festival Thought Bubble, which takes place at various venues across the city every November. Taking the festival’s emphasis upon the educational value of comics as its starting point, Comics Forum aims to increase the visibility and accessibility of comics scholarship through an academic conference that brings together scholars, artists and fans in a spirit of mutual cooperation and development.

The first Comics Forum (2009) was a one-day event entitled ‘Possibilities and Perspectives: A Conference on Comics’, which took place at the Alea Casino and showcased fourteen speakers from around the world. The second (2010) ran at Leeds Art Gallery for two days and comprised two conferences: ‘Women in Comics II’ and ‘Theory and Practice: A Conference on Comics’, featuring over forty speakers in total. 2011’s event ran from the 16^th to the 18^th of November and comprised three conferences: ‘Sculpture and Comic Art’, ‘Graphic Medicine’ and ‘Materiality and Virtuality: A Conference on Comics’.2012’s conference ran for two days at Leeds Central Library, and looked at a single theme in ‘Multiculturalism and Representation: A Conference on Comics’. Comic Forum 2013 dealt covered the subject of Small Press and Underground Comics, while 2014 covered the theme of violence in comics and 2015 looked at politics.

The Comics Forum website was established in 2011, and regularly publishes articles on a wide range of topics. The site also hosts regular columns on comics scholarship in Germany, Manga Studies and a monthly news review. Comics Forum provides a range of scholarly resources, including a directory of comics scholars, documentation from affiliated conferences and a selection of digital texts.

Contact email: comicsforum@hotmail.co.uk