Registration is now open for Comics Forum 2026: Welfare. The conference will take place at Leeds City Library on the 12th and 13th of November. Tickets cost £22/day and include refreshments and lunch. Click here to register at Eventbrite.
Ticket holders for Comics Forum 2025 will receive a 30% discount code for a ticket to theThought Bubble Comic Convention. Codes will be sent ahead of the convention.
We have also launched our Comics Forum 2026 webpage. The programme will be listed at the page shortly.
Comics and related forms have engaged with themes of welfare since at least as early as 1751, when Hogarth’s prints Beer Street and Gin Lane presented satirical comments on alcohol legislation and public health. Since then, depictions of welfare-related concerns have proliferated in comics ranging from small scale graphic pathographies through to large scale public communication campaigns. The rise of Graphic Medicine as a field of scholarship has given visibility to titles exploring health, disability and wellbeing, but comics are equally entwined with issues of welfare concerning literacy, representation and community. Beyond the content of the comics, the ways they are made, by a community of workers, draws our attention to the welfare of creators and the sustainability of the art form and its connected industries and audiences.
Comics Forum 2026 will explore the theme of welfare, broadly conceived, in relation to any form of comics (i.e. including bande dessinée, manga etc.). Proposals are welcome from academics and comics creators. Topics may include:
Proposals of up to 250 words in length are now being accepted at this link. The deadline for submissions is the 31st of August and you will be notified of acceptance by or before the 12th of September. Please include a short (100 word) biography of your speaker(s) with your proposal. We look forward to welcoming you to Leeds!
13-14 November 2025, Leeds Art Gallery and Central Library (UK)
When David Kunzle asserted in his 1973 magnum opus The Early Comic Strip, that it was by definition ‘a mass medium,’ he pointed to comics’ industrial and mechanical foundations, arguing that: ‘The comic strip is, and can only be, the product of the printing press’ (3). Although experimental comics challenge the idea that mechanical reproduction is a defining characteristic of comics, and the notion of the comic book industry as a coherent entity has been questioned, it is undeniable that comics have been greatly influenced by the industrial contexts in which they are created and circulate. These contexts include the companies that are well known for creating comics, such as publishers and retailers, but also less publicly visible but vitally important industries: printers, distributers, marketers, translators and more. Technology platforms and other media industries that connect to comics through branding, cross-promotion and trans- or multimedia forms also play important roles.
Comics Forum 2025 will explore the theme of industry, broadly conceived, in relation to any form of comics (i.e. including bande dessinée, manga etc.). Proposals are welcome from academics, and from industry participants (in any role). Topics may include:
Historical and/or geographical comics industries
The economics of comics and related industries
Models for studying comics as industrial forms
Anti- or non-industrial comics production
Digitisation as an industrial shift
Representations of industries in comics narratives
Agency, authorship and alienation within industrial contexts
Industrial relations, labour movements, precarity, collectivisation
Disruption in comics’ industrial contexts
The ethics of comics’ industrial practices
Comics as part of a broader media ecosystem
Future(s) for comics as industrially produced mass media
Challenges facing comics industries in the 2020s and 30s
We recognise that artificial intelligence (AI) is a key point of concern across a range of fields, and proposals on this topic are welcome, but we encourage applicants to think broadly about technology and manufacturing.
Submissions will be considered in any of the following three formats:
Paper: 20-minute paper on a focused topic
Panel: 1-hour structured discussion between three or more participants
Proposals of up to 250 words in length are now being accepted at this link: SUBMIT NOW. The deadline for submissions is the 31st of August and you will be notified of acceptance by or before the 12th of September. Please include a short (100 word) biography of your speaker(s) with your proposal. We look forward to welcoming you to Leeds!
Comics Forum 2024 | 14-15 November | Leeds Central Library (UK)
The thirteenth Comics Forum will focus on themes of embodiment within comics and Comics Studies across cultures, disciplines, and forms.
Embodiment is the process through which both individual and cultural ideas and beliefs become material. Embodiment generates an emerging challenge to and within Comics Studies that scholars such as Eszter Szép and Scott Jeffery have begun to explore within the field. Through themes of embodiment, we hope to call attention to how comics are a deeply embodied medium. Comics become embodied when they are made, through the movement of the body to draw, write, and make comics; when they are read through the readers’ bodily responses; when they become bodies of work or story. Comics themselves embody ideas and narratives through their lines, colours, layouts, speech balloons, visual and narrative styles, publishing formats, and sizes.
As an embodied medium, comics can re-affirm or unsettle the boundaries of dichotomies, such as the embodied Self/Other; the individual/collective; the objective/subjective; the fictional/real; the powerful/powerless. We are particularly interested in work that moves away from or challenges Western hegemonic forms and practices of embodiment in comics and graphic narratives.
Comics Studies attempts to situate itself between these cultures, bodies of work, creators, and readers. We are therefore also interested in how Comics Studies is embodied in the academy. What might Comics Studies, as an embodied methodology, bring to other disciplines or fields? Comics Forum 2024 therefore invites participants to consider embodiment through or within any new, developing, or previous work in the field. Subjects for discussion may include, but are not limited to:
Comics as archival bodies
Embodiment in comics industries
Embodiment of Comics Studies in the academy
Embodiment in Comics Studies’ research methodologies
Possibilities of disembodiment in comics
Embodiment in/of/through comics forms
Embodiment and biopolitics in comics
Embodied identities and positions in comics
Negotiations of embodied boundaries in comics
Interaction between comics and bodies of comics creators/readers/scholars
Comics Forum welcomes speakers from a diverse range of backgrounds, ranging from students to senior academics, practitioners and beyond. No particular academic disciplines are preferred, and we are open to proposals on comics and related forms from any part of the world. Proposals of up to 250 words for papers of 20 minutes in length are now being accepted at: comicsforum@hotmail.co.uk. Alternative formats of presentation, such as workshops or roundtable discussions, are welcome but must fit within the same 20-minute time limit. If you are proposing an alternative format, please indicate this in your proposal.
The deadline for submissions is the 31st of August, and you will be notified of acceptance by or before the 13th of September 2024. Please include a short (100 word) biography with your proposal. We look forward to seeing you in Leeds!
