Comics Forum
Open access to comics scholarship? Part of Thought Bubble? Yeah, we like that. Our editors Lydia Wysocki and Mike Thompson's paper EPIC THEMES IN AWESOME WAYS: How we made Asteroid Belter: The Newcastle Science Comic, and why it matters is now up on the Comics Forum blog.
- Paper by Lydia Wysocki and Mike Thompson, published 23rd September 2014
- Interview with Mike and Lydia by Graphixia
Healthcare professionals, academics, comics creators, and other folks? With a conference at Johns Hopkins Medical School in Baltimore, Maryland? Yeah, we like that too.
Our editor in chief Lydia gave a presentation on Epic themes in awesome ways, or the wee and guinea pigs in Asteroid Belter: The Newcastle Science Comic, looking at the wee (urinary tract infections) and guinea pig (cancer drug trials) pages as case studies. This focussed on how our collaborators made these comics, and what making these comics meant to our collaborators.
- Conference programme
- Social media reports from the conference
- (Our session might have been recorded - we'll update this when we know more)
The Engage 2013 conference for people involved university public engagement? In Bristol? Yeah, we'll go for a bit of that. Our editors Mike and Lydia led a workshop about using comics in public engagement.
Sparks Science Collider
Giving coders, artists, and artist-coders (coder-artists) a chance to play with scientific data? In Newcastle? Aye, go on then. Our editor in chief Lydia gave a presentation on comics-science collaboration, and led a workshop using comics to set up creative collaborations.
Comics conventions
We had stalls at Thought Bubble comics and sequential art festival in Leeds, Comica Comiket in London, and Canny Comic Con events in Newcastle. We gave free copies of Asteroid Belter to comics fans and creators, met some of our awesome collaborators (some new friends, some old friends), and talked with people about our project.
Our editor Lydia and our friend Ernesto Priego co-authored a letter in response to Matthew Reisz's piece The hero in all of is (Times Higher Education, 24th July 2014), and shared it on The Comics Grid academic blog. Ermesto and Lydia clarified the difference between on the one hand academics and academic researchers as characters in comics, and on the other hand combining academic research with comics. They also highlighted some key comics, events, and academic journals in this field.
We haven't listed all the conversations, presentations at Newcastle University events, emails, meetings, 'can I just ask you a quick question' chats. These all mean just as much to us as the conference presentations and academic paper. We're still knocked-out delighted every time people tell us they've read Asteroid Belter, and are proper chuffed that it's still being read and shared online (click on the top right of our homepage). If you haven't already read it, this corking review from Richard Bruton on Forbidden Planet International tells you what you're missing out on.
We might even have enjoyed talking about Asteroid Belter. If you ask nicely we might even talk to you about it: at an event, over a cuppa, by email... we're versatile.
We're setting up new comics + research projects and will tell you about them just as soon as we can. Hopefully these links will keep you busy until then.
*haha very funny
