Comics Memory

Maaheen Ahmed is a postdoctoral fellow at the Research Foundation - Flanders (FWO) at Ghent University, Belgium. She is currently working on possibilities for conceptualizing the relationship between comics and different kinds of memories, ranging from personal memories to collective and medium-based ones. Her books include Openness of Comics (2016) and Le Statut culturel de la bande dessinée/The Cultural Standing of Comics (2017), co-edited with Stéphanie Delneste and Jean-Louis Tilleuil. She recently received an ERC Starting Grant for her project on children in European comics. Benoît Crucifix is a FRS-FNRS doctoral fellow at the University of Liège and UCLouvain, Belgium. His thesis focuses on the cultural memory of comics in the contemporary graphic novel. His research on comics memory has been published in European Comic Art, The Comics Grid, Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics and Inks. He is a member of the ACME Comics Research Group and of the editorial board of Comicalités.

1. Introduction: Untaming Comics Memory (Maaheen Ahmed & Benoît Crucifix).- 2. Portrait of the Artist as a Nostalgic: Seth's It's a Good Life if You Don't Weaken (Giorgio Busi Rizzi).- 3. 'It's All Come Flooding Back': Memories of Childhood Comics (Mel Gibson).- 4. Archives and Oral History in Emmanuel Guibert's Le Photographe (Bettina Egger).- 5. The Ever-Shifting Wall: Edmond Baudoin and the 'Continuous Poem' of Autobiography (Pedro Moura).- 6. Keep Out, Or Else: Diary as Body in The Diary of a Teenage Girl and Cruddy (Rachel R. Miller).- 7. The Un-erotic Dancer: Sylvie Rancourt's Melody (Eleanor Ty).- 8. Panique en Atlantique: Bridging Personal and Collective Memories of L'Association and Comics History (Christian Reyns-Chikuma).- 9. Comics History and the Question of Delinquency: The Case of Criminal (Christopher Pizzino).- 10. Sons and Grandsons of Origins: Narrative Memory in Marvel Superhero Comics (Jean-Matthieu Méon).- 11. A Trip Down Memory Lane: Reprints and Canonization of Morris' Lucky Luke Series (Nicolas Martinez).- 12. Selective Memory: Art History and the Comic Strip Work of Jack B. Yeats (Michael Connerty).- 13. The Marie Duval Archive: Memory and the Development of the Comic Strip Canon (Simon Grennan).- 14. The Tremendous Treasure: The Curious Problem of Preserving Belgian Comics Heritage (Roel Daenen).- 15. Fanzines and Swedish Comics Memory (Gunnar Krantz).- 16. Store Memory (Philippe Capart).- 17. Coda: A User Guide to Comics Memory (Maaheen Ahmed and Benoît Crucifix).

"Comics Memory succeeds at addressing the role of memory in comics and the role of comics in memory from new vantage points, opening up new avenues for research on the subject. ... it also proposes new methodologies to examine memory and memory culture more generally." (Elizabeth "Biz" Nijdam, Image & Narrative, Vol. 20 (1), 2019)