This article proposes that the concept of travel can provide a useful framing device for a composite of enquiries relating to comics. It argues that there exists a dialectic between comics and travel, which perhaps has elided concerted attention, and which might yield fruitful areas for further research.
How to speak of travel? Travel practices and modes encompass divergent spheres of experience, yet commonality can be extrapolated in the movement of bodies across geographical locations (Kaur and Hutnyk, 1999: 1-4). Tourism has become one of the most significant global industries – in 2010 international tourist arrivals reached 940 million and figures are expected to continue growing (UNWTO) in spite of widespread financial downturns. Migrant workforces constitute close to 214 million (Migration Policy Institute website), while diasporas resulting from ethnic, religious and political persecution are a feature of the present as much as of the recent and more distant past. Current figures put the figure of forcibly displaced people in the worlds at 43.3 million (UNHCR). Movements and cross-cultural encounters, negotiations and hybridisations are most commonly examined in their relation to occidental expansion, imperialism and neo-colonialism, although it might be timely to remember that travel defined by west- east, or north -south relationships intrinsically reproduces a euro-centric model (Kaur and Hutnyk, 1999: 1).
Comics Forum 