ABSTRACT
A comics are a multimodal medium and art form that combines graphic storytelling with written text in culturally codified ways. In comic theory, this combinatory aspect is regarded as a defining feature of comics, along with the sequentiality of the comic narrative. Antecedents for a transregional approach can also be found in the research by Latin American academics. From a historical point of view, the comic is a product of the rise of the culture industry; it owes its explosion as a cultural phenomenon to the relative ease and cheapness of industrial cultural production. The 1960s brought an aesthetic appreciation of the comic as an art form, starting with pop art’s fascination with comic art in the oeuvre of Roy Lichtenstein, culminating in Art Spiegelman’s avant-garde comic magazine RAW, and eventually the birth of the graphic novel in the 1980s.
