Archiving Cartoons as Black Intellectual Thought

ABSTRACT:This forum brings together six short essays that, in different ways, engage with the methodological and theoretical challenges and opportunities that are unique to the study of comics in periodical media. Focusing examples from different eras, genres, and types of publication, the contributions assembled here consider key concepts for the study of periodical comics, discuss the experimental aesthetics of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century graphic narratives, uncover forgotten subcultural histories of the art form, scrutinize the challenges connected to the archiving and museological exhibition of comics and cartoons, and address the interplay between the seriality of twenty-first-century webcomics and processes of community building. In doing so, the contributions to this forum shed new light on the specific aesthetics, affordances, and cultural and social impact of comics in periodical media.