There have been several reasons to exclude comic from high culture and academic studies.
Among them, and apart from its popular character, these being its relationship with
the child or youth reader and, consequently, its conception as a mere entertainment
that is addressed to this kind of audience. Moreover, since its beginnings, comic
has been released from this identification, being considered as a restrictive label
through examples where adult serves as the model reader. Let us think, for example,
about those satires that can be found in Hogarth’s and Töpffer’s works or even in
Richard F. Outcoult’ s famous Yellow Kid.
As the same as child and youth literature, comic has always been linked to children's
audiences as a determining element for its referred exclusion, having been considered
as a minor art form, until well into the 20th Century. Therefore, from the sixties there has been an increasing interest in comic
as an object of study by means of awaking its cultural conscience. This is reflected
from the academic perspective in its possitive increase in different areas works and
disciplines, as well as in the number of congresses, conferences, forums or seminars.
Nowadays different University Chairs have been founded to design and implement different
Master's and Postgraduate studies on this academic line.
Otherwise, apart from a marked openness to non-fiction,the recognition of comic’s
communicative function and ability to lead complex issues and question to an adult
reader, means a way of exploring new themes, formats and genres. These being, first,
from pioneering works in defense of sexual affective freedom, such as those that are
signed by Alison Bechdel, Howard Cruse, Nazario or Ralf König; second, going through
foundational titles that are linked to the so-called social stream through the works
of Justin Green’s, David B’s, or Paco Roca’s, regarding the pathologies figuration
and functional diversity; and third, even those contributions such as the emblematic
Persepolis or Maus, as oft cited milestones.
Specifically, this monograph takles the complex relationship between comics and diversity
as a social identity discursive space. This means an interrelation with the Other and the representation of otherness through eight works. These essays have been ellaborated
by several researchers from different backgrounds, fields of knowledge, methods and
research perspectives, with the common factor of interpretative and academic rigour
in approaching the object of study.
First of all, Diana Castilleja explores the comic possibilities to make those forgotten
voices and geographic spaces of Latin American migration to the United States visible,
being based on a corpus of five significant titles. Beyond entertainment, on the one
hand, this researcher claims for her role in the configuration of a socially committed
discourse. On the other, she delves into gender hybridity as an intrinsic feature
of comic that challenges the hegemonic discourse from discursive diversity, conferring
legitimacy on the migratory experience.
From the strategies range study that are displayed by comic in its search for a language
to allow trauma being expressed, José Manuel Trabado focuses on Emil Ferris’s work,
My Favourite Thing is Monsters and on Una’s Una entre muchas. Trabado reveals the mechanisms that are implemented in the construction of two differentiated
iconographic models, but with a common axis, this being, the overcoming of the traditional
forms of comic representation towards the creation of two singular repertoires.
Sheila López-Prados and Francisco Sáez de Adana enquire the use of comic as a tool
to raise awareness and attention to diversity, being based on a study that was carried
out in Primary Education. Their work reveals how the creation of comics by students
can promote empathy, while showing the need to influence visual literacy and the development
of multimodal skills among students in this educational stage.
Within the framework of literary education, Jerónimo Méndez-Cabrera and Francesc Rodrigo-Segura
explore the potential of manga as an outstanding possibility for reading promotion
from an intercultural perspective. According to this purpose, they select the work
Tomoji, by Jiro Taniguchi, as a representative case, in terms of the interrelation of thematic
links between Western culture and Japanese culture, where to base the study of identity
and cultural diversity. Likewise, they make a proposal for reading motivation from
certain methodological keys of the didactic sequences. Its ultimate purpose is to
generate a replicable model for reading promotion with manga, as a prominent axis
from which to promote discussion around cultural aspects, such as the social role
of women, the notion of nature or family.
Under Prehistory as scene, Margarita Savchenkova approaches the representation of
diversity from Sapiens: A Graphic History, The Birth of Humankind, a graphic version of the essay Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. From the basis on a translation and semiological analysis model, she reads both
works in order to understand the place that expressions of diversity occupy in them
and discovers an ideological message: the creation of parallels between the prehistoric
era and the contemporary world, in terms of ethnic-cultural, affective-sexual and
gender diversity.
Enric Falguera-García and Moisés Selfa-Sastre look into the historical comic as a
tool with great potential for the transmission of an ideology through certain referents
and the configuration of identity. In particular, they focus on the Catalan-language
comic about the medieval history of Catalonia and select a corpus of ten titles to
analyse the ideological intention behind the choice of events and characters. At the
same time, these authors propose an analysis model of the comic that merges different
perspectives.
Finally, Gino Frezza offers a documented, reflective analysis of the comic diversity
from different study variables. These are including, on the one hand, drawings, and
on the other, characters, stories, and journey. He also points out the existence of
a stream of agreement, overlap, and inextricable path between both.
Through these eight differentiated voices, from different perspectives and disciplines,
we have explored some of the possibilities regarding the triad that has been proposed
in this issue, this being comic, reading, and diversity. Therefore, we stay in front of an interesting range of studies. These are offering
us a suggestive approach to the editorial line that is marked from the monograph under
the same diversity of their views, without exhausting the complexity of the proposed
topic in any way. There are still different focuses left to explore, from different
methodologies, perspectives and areas of knowledge. From this monograph, we have the
chance to invite all researchers to immerse themselves in the different lines of this
outlined work. We hope that this monograph could become a reference for all those
who are interested in this matter and its forthcoming researching approach.
