The Comics Grid’s 14th Volume (2024)

~ Ernesto Priego
The Comics Grid Journal of Comics Scholarship astronaut out of space ship on space postcard
Season’s greetings! We have wrapped up The Comics Grid’s 14th volume, corresponding to 2024. This year marked one of our busiest periods for submissions. We extend sincere thanks to all colleagues who entrusted us with their work and demonstrated patience and understanding throughout the process. We are equally grateful to our dedicated team members involved in peer review, copyediting, proofreading, and typesetting—your efforts make The Comics Grid possible. This year’s concise volume features a robust selection of 9 articles across the Research and Review sections:

RESEARCH

Konefał, S. J. & Szyłak, J., (2024) “The Aesthetics and Cultural Influence of Polish Comic Zines from the 1980s and 1990s on the Domestic Comic Market”, The Comics Grid: Journal of Comics Scholarship 14(1). doi: https://doi.org/10.16995/cg.11532
 
Giner-Monfort, J., (2024) “The Bureau of Applied Social Research and Comics Studies in the 1940s”, The Comics Grid: Journal of Comics Scholarship 14(1). doi: https://doi.org/10.16995/cg.9900
 
Labra, D., (2024) “Caught Between Manga and the Graphic Novel: Two Cartoonists’ Trajectories in Contemporary Argentinian “National Comics””, The Comics Grid: Journal of Comics Scholarship 14(1). doi: https://doi.org/10.16995/cg.10250
 
Fonioková, Z., (2024) “Identity Construction in Graphic Life Narratives by Aline Kominsky Crumb and Katie Green”, The Comics Grid: Journal of Comics Scholarship 14(1). doi: https://doi.org/10.16995/cg.11034
 
Verstappen, N., (2024) “U Ba Kyi’s Neo-Traditionalist Comics Style: At The Crossroads of Myanmar’s Buddhism, Arts and Colonial History”, The Comics Grid: Journal of Comics Scholarship 14(1). doi: https://doi.org/10.16995/cg.9983
 
REVIEW

Ebesu, D., (2024) “Visual Storytelling and Historical Memory. A Review of Graphic Memories of the Civil Rights Movement: Reframing History in Comics”, The Comics Grid: Journal of Comics Scholarship 14(1). doi: https://doi.org/10.16995/cg.18185

Franco, I. E., (2024) “Beyond Boundaries: A Review of Monstrous Women in Comics”, The Comics Grid: Journal of Comics Scholarship 14(1). doi: https://doi.org/10.16995/cg.15400
 
Raina, S., (2024) “Chronicling Five Decades: A Review of UK Feminist Cartoons and Comics: A Critical Survey”, The Comics Grid: Journal of Comics Scholarship 14(1). doi: https://doi.org/10.16995/cg.16577
 
Connerty, M., (2024) “Delight at the New: A Review of Comics and Modernism: History, Form, and Culture”, The Comics Grid: Journal of Comics Scholarship 14(1). doi: https://doi.org/10.16995/cg.16861
 

You can access the whole volume here: https://www.comicsgrid.com/issue/1200/info/, and you can access all our archive at https://www.comicsgrid.com/issues/.

Ongoing Work

This year saw a lot of hard work behind the scenes from our Graphic Biographical Fiction Special Collection Editors Nancy Pedri (Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada) and Maria Juko (Independent Researcher). The editorial and review processes are still underway, and we are hoping the collection will be published during 2025.

Authors with submissions under consideration can check the stage of their submissions by accessing their account on the journal management system via https://www.comicsgrid.com/ as usual.

Recommend us!

The Comics Grid’s publisher, Open Library of Humanities, has developed a new ‘Recommend Us’ tool to help spread the word about their good works in open access. The OLH does not pay for advertising, so relies on word of mouth to help attract new library supporters, which in turn pays for our journal’s publication costs and allows us to help flip more journals to open access (see The OLH Model for how we’re funded). You can find the tool at https://www.openlibhums.org/plugins/supporters/recommend-us/ and it only takes a few moments to complete – please do give it a go! 

Now on Bluesky!

Apparently Bluesky is now the new place for researchers to be (paywalled Nature article here). You can find us and follow us at https://bsky.app/profile/comicsgrid.com.

Winter Break Closure Arrangements

The Comics Grid editorial office will be closed from 21st December 2024 – 20th January 2025 inclusive. All editorial and review duties will be resumed from the 20th onward. There will be no editorial nor technical support monitoring throughout this period. We encourage everyone to take a well-deserved break!

The OLH team will be mostly on annual leave while Birkbeck, University of London has its Christmas closure from 21st December 2024 – 1st January 2025 inclusive.
 
We at The Comics Grid would like to thank all our contributors and collaborators for all your hard work and diligence this year. We look forward to continuing to work with you in the new year. To all our readers, colleagues and friends, thank you for your ongoing support.
 
We would like to wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

(Please don’t forget to Recommend Us!)

This text was originally sent as the Comics Grid’s yearly newsletter. You can subscribe here.







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Published by Ernesto Priego

My passion is creating opportunities for discovery, creativity and innovation. I am an advocate for enhanced access to information as a public good. I enjoy fostering engagement and openness, facilitating collaboration and mentoring. My main focus is multi-disciplinary and involves practically and theoretically connecting the dots between varied, closely-related fields and topics: comics studies; human-computer interaction design, library and information science, digital humanities, scholarly communications, publishing studies, digital innovation and material culture, intellectual rights and open science, access, data and educational resources. I love writing and spreading the word about the things I believe in. I love higher education and the Internet and I define myself as a digital scholarship advocate. I love working collaboratively and on my own. You can still follow me and/or contact me via Twitter @ernestopriego.