Comics Studies’ Identity Crisis: A Meta-Theoretical Survey

Abstract

This article reflects on comics studies’ tendency for self-apology and a latent inferiority complex. It offers a survey of contemporary comics criticism and textbooks as well as a critique of a tendency towards an assimilation of comics studies by literary studies. It highlights the ways in which interdisciplinary approaches and a critical engagement with the foundational texts of comics studies, as well as recent scholarly endeavors to provide a theoretical grounding to comics studies apart from literary studies, can help the discipline. In particular, it advances the hope that comics can come to be recognized as an image-based medium with a need for its own critical vocabulary