Torch talk on Autobiographical Comics

‘WHAT MAKES A COMIC AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL?’: FREE ONLINE TALK MONDAY MAY 30TH by Andrew Kunka – details here.

This talk will focus on the history of autobiographical comics, challenging the commonly held assumption that autobiographical comics began with Justin Green’s Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary in 1972. While that work was certainly groundbreaking in starting a trend in confessional autobiography, we can find autobiographical strains in the comics medium going back much earlier. One of the key strains in early autobiographical comics is stories that focus on the lives of cartoonists and their various creative, professional, and personal challenges. The talk will examine several key examples of these comics to identify early trends in autobiography, to question the conventional understanding of the history and canon formation of autobiographical comics, and to address challenges in researching this underexplored area of comics history.
This talk is part of the Oxford Comics Network Summer Seminar Series 2022.