Call for Papers – CLOSURE: Journal of Comics Studies #13 (November 2026)

Open Call for Submissions

CLOSURE: Journal of Comics Studies will once again provide a platform for all facets of comic studies in its thirteenth issue, to be published in Fall 2026. From cultural, visual, and media studies to social and natural sciences and beyond, CLOSURE invites essays and academic reviews that engage with the »state of the comic.« Whether in-depth analysis, comic theory, or innovative new approaches—for the open topic section, we welcome diverse contributions from the interdisciplinary field of comics research.

Thematic Section: »Animal Studies«

The visual language of comics offers unique possibilities for rethinking and representing animals and human-animal relationships. Colors, styles, and focalization can be employed to explore and question the boundaries between human and non-human lifeworlds. Medium-specific gaps resist fixed anthropocentric determination. On additional formal levels, comic artists can experimentally rearrange the sequencing of panels, signs, and narrative threads to create multispecies narratives and thus reflect animality and animal perspectives as independent forms of experience (José 2020, 326–334).

Many research perspectives can connect to this framework: How does the media phenomenology of comics challenge our anthropocentric perception and interpretation of human-animal relationships? What happens when animals move beyond trauma-induced costuming (Batman) or the appropriation of animal characteristics (Spider-Man) (cf. Schatz & Parson 2017)? When should animal representations in comics be understood as metaphors (MAUS), as anthropomorphizations of real animals (Pride of Baghdad), or as indeterminately fantastic hybrid beings (Donald, Mickey, Goofy)? How much animality actually remains in these latter cases beyond pure graphic design? More importantly, what political potentials and programs can emerge from these – or other – representational strategies?

Human-Animal Studies, emerging as an interdisciplinary research field in the 1980s in the Anglo-American sphere, can address such questions among others. The field established itself as an independent academic discourse approximately 10 years later. The research field is relatively young but has gained relevance in recent years, both within its own domain and through intersectional connections with fields such as Postcolonial Studies and the Environmental Humanities. At the same time, Critical Animal Studies developed as a political-activist movement that seeks an explicit connection between animal rights activism and academic discourse. Both research fields encompass descriptive analyses of human-animal relationships and critical examinations of domination and exploitation. In each case, recognizing animal agency and deconstructing anthropocentric concepts of animality remains a central concern. These frameworks translate well to comics: contributors can trace animals both as representative metaphors (cf. Willmott 2018) and as individuals acting independently. Another approach involves applying discourses from animal ethics or philosophy (cf. Kockel & Hahn 2017) to examine the negotiation of animality within comics.

Already around 1900, Gus Dircks used anthropomorphic animal figures in the series Bugville (1900–1902) to address all-too-human matters (cf. Eckhorst 2016). Whether beetles, mice, or ducks – animals often functioned as comedic representations of human characteristics. From the 1980s onwards, complex metaphors also established themselves, initiated among others by Art Spiegelman's MAUS, and continued through non-anthropomorphic characters, as in We Are On Our Own: A Memoir by Miriam Katin (2006).
Since the 1970s, these representations have expanded through critical engagements with animal rights and ecology. Animal themes found expression in both Underground Comix and alternative comics. An entire scene emerged concerned with ecological consciousness, where human-animal relationships and species boundaries were questioned. Animality was ›discovered‹ as a political and ethical theme.
Meanwhile, webcomics and independent publishers have significantly expanded the diversity of human-animal relationships and critical perspectives on animality within comics. These stories move beyond simply showing animals to establishing them as subjects with their own perspectives, moving past stereotypical representations (Herman 2018a). Human-animal narratives appear prominently in Graphic Medicine and environmental comics, taking both activist and autobiographical forms while serving educational purposes around animal rights and ecology.

These comics challenge both social norms and comics conventions by visualizing animality and human-animal relationships while configuring animal agency very differently in relation to respective animal consciousness and sensation concepts. While the inner lives of the cat, dog, and rabbit protagonists in Tom King's and Peter Gross's Animal Pound (2025), a politically contemporary update to George Orwell's Animal Farm (1945), hardly differ from humans, Tony Fleecs and Trish Forstner's Stray Dogs (2021) presents us with a thriller plot featuring dogs whose memory barely extends beyond several days. Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely's WE3 (2004), in turn, attempted to maintain (or make experienceable at all) the completely non-human, almost alien inner life of their cybernetically enhanced animal protagonists. David Aja and Matt Fraction take a similar approach with Lucky, the famous 'Pizza Dog' from Hawkeye #11 (2013).

Understanding all these strategies requires careful examination of both the works and the discourses surrounding animals. CLOSURE #13 invites submissions that explore Animal Studies perspectives in various comics cultures while examining intersections with animal figures, forms, and narratives.

Possible topics include:

• Animal Studies theories in comics: Visual implementation of theoretical concepts about animality, e.g., speciesism (Singer 1974), xenonomy, etc.
• Posthuman and multispecies narratives: Comics that question human exceptionalism
• Anthropomorphism and its limits: Critical analysis of anthropomorphic animal figures and their ideological functions
• Animal Studies and their limits: Is the animal perspective representable?
• Metaphorical use of animals: Political and social allegories
• Superheroes with animal powers: From Batman to Squirrel Girl and Marvel Mutts
• Hybrid and chimeric identities: Comics about human-animal transformations and boundary crossings
• Mythological and fantastic animal beings: Dragons, werewolves, and other chimeric figures
• Ecological comics and climate change: Representation of human-nature relationships and environmental destruction
• Animal rights discourses in comics: Activist and educational representations of animal suffering and liberation; animal protection comics in pedagogical contexts: Use in schools and universities
• Intersectional perspectives: Connections between animal oppression and other forms of discrimination
• Domestication vs. wildness – hunting and meat consumption vs. ›best friends‹: Representation of tame and wild animals as well as their cultural codings; critical representations of the instrumentalization of animals for purposes of consumption, science, etc.
• Comics for different target groups: From children's books to graphic novels for adults or science comics – how do we convey animal entities didactically?


Please send your abstract for the Open Section or for the focus »Animal Studies« (approx. 3000 characters), as well as a short bio, for consideration for our thirteenth issue of CLOSURE to closure@email.uni-kiel.de by November 15, 2025. The contributions (35,000-50,000 characters) are expected by March 1st, 2026. For more information about CLOSURE and our previous issues, please visit www.closure.uni-kiel.de.


Bibliography
• Alaniz, José: »Animals in Graphic Narrative.« In The Oxford Handbook of Comic Book Studies, ed. Frederick Luis Aldama. Oxford: Oxford University Press 2020, pp. 326–334.
• Dembicki, Matt: Xoc: The Journey of a Great White. Portland: Oni 2012.
• Eckhorst, Tim: Gus Dirks — Käfer, Kunst & Kummer. Berlin: Christian A. Bachmann Verlag 2016.
• Herman, David (Ed.): Animal Comics: Multispecies Storyworlds in Graphic Narratives. London: Bloomsbury 2018a.
• Herman, David (Ed.): Narratology beyond the Human: Storytelling and Animal Life. New York: Oxford University Press 2018b.
• Katin, Miriam: We Are On Our Own: A Memoir. Montreal: Drawn & Quarterly 2006.
• Kockel, Julia von and Oliver Hahn: Tierethik – der Comic zur Debatte. München: Verlag Wilhelm Fink 2017.
• Spiegelman, Art: Die vollständige Maus: Die Geschichte eines Überlebenden. Frankfurt a. M.: Fischer 2008.
• Willmott, Glenn: »The Animalized Character and Style.« In David Herman (Ed.): Animal Comics: Multispecies Storyworlds in Graphic Narratives. London: Bloomsbury 2018, pp. 53–76.