Multimodal Comics: The Evolution of Comics Studies

Comics have always embraced a diversity of formats, existing in complex relationships to other media, and have been dynamic in their response to new technologies and means of distribution. This collection explores interactions between comics, other media and technologies, employing a wide range of theoretical and critical perspectives.

By focusing on key critical concepts within multimodality (transmediality, adaptation, intertextuality) and addressing multiple platforms and media (digital, analogue, music, prose, linguistics, graphics), it expands and develops existing comics theory and also addresses multiple other media and disciplines.

Over the last decade Studies in Comics has been at the forefront of international research in comics. This volume showcases some of the best research to appear in the journal. In so doing it demonstrates the evolution of Comics Studies over the last decade and shows how this research field has engaged with various media and technologies in a continuously evolving artistic and production environment. The theme of multimodality is particularly apt since media and technologies have changed significantly during this period. The collection will thus give a view of the ways in which comics scholars have engaged with multimodality during a time when 'modes' were continually changing.

Madeline B. Gangnes is an associate professor of English at the University of Scranton who received her Ph.D. in English from the University of Florida and her M.Litt. in comics studies from the University of Dundee. Her research and teaching concern nineteenth-century British literature, periodical studies, comics and visual studies, book history, digital humanities, and environmental and climate literature. She is a co-editor of Studies in Comics and editor emerita of Sequentials. Her scholarship appears in Studies in Comics, Inks: The Journal of the Comics Studies Society, the Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics, Victorian Periodicals Review, Victorian Popular Fictions, and The Edinburgh History of Children’s Periodicals (Edinburgh University Press, 2024), among other venues. She also co-edited Multimodal Comics: The Evolution of Comics Studies (Intellect, 2024) and contributed entries to Key Terms in Comics Studies (Palgrave, 2022) and The Literary Encyclopedia (online). More information about her scholarship and teaching can be found at http://mbgangnes.com

Contact: The University of Scranton, 800 Linden St. Scranton, PA 18510, USA.

Professor Christopher Murray is chair of comics studies and English in the Division of Humanities, University of Dundee and director of the Comics Studies Creative Research Hub and UniVerse Comics. He is a founding co-editor of Studies in Comics. His research interests include British comics and science fiction, and adaptation from literature to comics. He has collaborated with comics artists to produce several comics for research and engagement purposes, including adaptations of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (UniVerse, 2015–19), Lord Byron’s poem ‘Darkness’ (UniVerse, 2024), Karel Čapek’s R.U.R. (UniVerse, 2022), Olaf Stapledon’s Odd John (Shift Publishing, 2024), several short stories by Robert Duncan Milne, appearing in Robert Duncan Milne’s Tales from the Argonaut (UniVerse, 2025), and many healthcare and public information comics.

Contact: University of Dundee, Dundee, Scotland DD1 4HN, UK.

Julia Round (MA, Ph.D.) is an award-winning writer and independent scholar whose research focuses on the intersections of Gothic, comics and children’s literature. Her books include Gothic in Comics and Graphic Novels (McFarland, 2014), Gothic for Girls (University Press of Mississippi, 2019) and the co-authored Comics and Graphic Novels (Bloomsbury, 2022). She has also co-edited books such as Horror and Comics (University of Wales Press, 2025), Multimodal Comics (Intellect, 2024) and the Companion to Literary Media (Routledge, 2023) and written over 50 peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters. She is a visiting fellow at Bournemouth University, UK, where she was previously associate professor of English and comics studies and head of the Narrative, Culture and Community Research Centre. She is one of the founding editors of Studies in Comics (Intellect) and the Encapsulations book series (University Press of Nebraska) and a co-organizer of the International Graphic Novel and Comics Conference (www.igncc.com). She shares her work at www.juliaround.com.