Often thought of as a universal visual language, comics are stories told in panels and speech bubbles that are assumed to function similarly across cultures. However, a new scholarly volume argues that this view has limited how comics are understood and has overlooked visual storytelling traditions in the Global South.
Comics and the Global South, published by Leuven University Press, collects case studies from Latin America, Africa, Asia, and Indigenous communities. The book challenges what co-editor Dr. Joe Sutliff Sanders of the University of Cambridge calls a very narrow Anglo-European idea of what comics are.
“Comics have a much more varied cultural history than we tend to think, partly because we keep measuring them against a very narrow Anglo-European idea of what they are,” Sanders said.
The book explains that comics in these regions reflect their own cultural, political, and historical backgrounds. Viewing them solely through Western frameworks can obscure how they function as tools of resistance, memory, and identity.
Rethinking What “Counts” as a Comic
Since the Golden Age of American comics in the 1940s, most scholarship has defined comics as serialized stories published in major Western cities. The new volume suggests that this definition leaves out other visual traditions that do not fit this model.
In eastern India, for example, artists have adapted Patachitra, a centuries-old scroll painting tradition, into new forms of visual storytelling. In Aotearoa New Zealand, Māori creators have reimagined pūrākau, or traditional creation stories, as hybrid works that combine elements of comics and picture books to present ancestral stories to modern readers. These works do not look like superhero comics from London or New York, but the editors say they broaden the possibilities of what comics can be.
“If we can only imagine comics in the terms of what a handful of big publishers tell us they should be, the artform will atrophy,” Sanders said. “Comics don’t have to be the things you buy in comic shops in London or New York. They can be something different.”
Visual Storytelling as Cultural Resistance
Several chapters in the book examine how comics have given a platform to marginalized voices. Brazilian scholar Leticia Simoes uses a method called malunga, a term once used to describe bonds formed among people forced together on slave ships, to study comics made by women in South America. She uses the concept to examine how shared experiences of trauma, racism, and displacement create solidarity that artists then express through visual storytelling.
Her analysis examines the work of Brazilian artist Marilia Marz, whose fragmented, collage-like images depict the complex identities of Black women in Brazil. She also studies Chilean cartoonist Amanda Baeza, whose comics imagine new worlds where female characters break free from cycles of abuse. Simoes calls these practices escrevivência, or “write-existing”: storytelling that asserts identity and survival.
Hybrid Forms
The book also examines the rise of Indo-manga, in which Indian artists draw on Japanese manga styles while basing their stories on local mythology and modern life.
Examples include Yakshi by Parvaty Menon, about a Gen Z demoness who is obsessed with her smartphone, and the Nirvana series by Abhiray and Abiresh, which retells ancient stories in a modern action style. These works use global visual styles but adapt them for local readers.
For co-editor Dr. Andrea Aramburú of the University of Manchester, this hybridity highlights the need for broader critical frameworks. “There is already a lot of passionate, intelligent critical engagement with these comics,” she said, “but much of it has been waiting to enter the global conversation.”
Expanding the Canon
Comics have offered a platform for communities excluded from mainstream publishing because they are inexpensive to produce and easy to distribute. Sanders described them as “the artform of people that are generally heard from less.”
The book ultimately calls for a shift in how comics are studied and valued. As scholarship expands to include these perspectives, the boundary of what “counts” as a comic may expand as well.
“Hopefully it will deepen their enjoyment of the art, and at the same time encourage them to challenge some of the assumptions that still dominate comics culture in the West,” Sanders concluded.
Austin Burgess is a writer and researcher with a background in sales, marketing, and data analytics. He holds a Master of Business Administration, a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration, and a Data Analytics certification. His work combines analytical training with a focus on emerging science, aerospace, and astronomical research.