On the morning of Saturday 8 November 2025, I took part in the Comics Against Capitalism panel within the 22nd Annual Historical Materialism Conference in London. The session brought together myself, Dominic Davies and Reed Puc (who has just submitted his PhD dissertation under our supervision). It proved to be one of those conference moments that felt genuinely collaborative and energising.
We wanted to explore the question of whether comics, a form born within capitalist modernity, might also serve as tools for thinking and acting against capitalism. Although the audience was small, it was absolutely the kind of audience every scholar hopes for: international, diverse, thoughtful, and fully engaged. Dom had brought along comics grid handouts so people could take notes in visual form, and throughout the session I could see attendees sketching and annotating ideas as they emerged. It created a brilliant atmosphere of shared experimentation, where theory and practice seemed to move together.
Dom opened with “Graphic Grand Narratives: Putting the Totality in the Picture”, where he argued that comics are not simply fragmented or postmodern forms but actually help us see capitalism as a total system. Drawing on Lukács, he showed how the comics form materialises dialectical thinking: each panel exists in relation to others beyond our immediate view.. His talk set the tone perfectly, suggesting that comics can be dialectical tools, helping us grasp both the material and imaginative totality of the world we live in.
I was second to present. My own paper, “Form Beyond Chronology: Small Press Comics and the Redistribution of Cultural Ownership”, focused on small press comics, zines and minicomics as counter-hegemonic practices. I drew on Walter Benjamin’s idea of the logic of form to argue that these small-scale, user-generated, and co-designed publications resist the monopolies of cultural production). For me, the material processes of self-publishing (photocopying, risograph printing, stapling, hand assembly) are more than aesthetic choices. They are political gestures that embody redistribution rather than accumulation. These modes of making and sharing comics create small, temporary communities of readers and makers, producing value through connection rather than profit.
Reed closed the session with “Superheroes and Social Justice: Towards an Abolitionist Reading of Spider-Man Comics”. Building on Scott McCloud’s idea of closure (the reader’s work of connecting panels) and Jesse A. Goldberg’s grammars of law, he argued that superhero comics reproduce the sequential logic of policing and justice. Reed’s close reading of Spider-Man pages was both sharp and generous. He showed how policing functions in these stories to secure capitalist order, but also how the openness of the gutter (the blank space between panels) offers possibilities for rupture and reimagining. His abolitionist reading of superhero comics reminded us that even within mainstream forms, moments of resistance can be found. It was a wonderful way to celebrate the submission of his PhD thesis!
The discussion that followed was animated and reflective. Audience members used the grid sheets to share their visual and written responses, and the conversation ranged widely, from Marxist aesthetics to webcomics and abolitionist thought.
I left the room feeling deeply encouraged by the session. Comics Against Capitalism was, for me, a reminder that comics are not just about representation but about relation: about how we read, create, think and work together against the conditions that produce inequality. My gratitude to Dom Davies for having thought of submitting this panel in the first instance; it was a joy to work together once again.
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