Earlier this week I’ve been part of an inspiring and intense comics conference (4-5 May 2026, Malmö, Sweden), where a most friendly and generous international community spent days and nights reflecting on the field. I was a respondent in the MATERIALITY section. As respondent, I could spend time with the smart and passonate position papers by Barbara Chamberlin and Hailey Austin. I felt it only appropriate to prepare a handout… but then my brain started overthinking the innocent idea and turning it into a two-week project. So I responded to the papers by making a zine in the risography studio of Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture (2 weeks, 3 colors).
I love the freedom that thinking about theory through practice means and the flexibility of our field that has allowed me to do my recent publications as comics. I have been thinking of colors as materials. I have been thinking about what to add to my zine during the night so that I could print it with a new color on the next day.
As a starting point, I have been thinking about the implications of my hobbyhorses: comics as invitation to engage, comics as event, comics as FUN! I started with yellow hands and fingerprints: a bright color, some tactile stock images that can be taken to many directions… Somehow it turned into a party invitation. I used candy colors for printing, improvised a lot, added a crowd of readers, and lots of noses on the other side… The zine also contains some of my theses on materiality in comics, its implications, and our tasks. It would be great to publish (about) this project — but where?
The conference has been organized by Martin Lund from Malmö University, and it is a follow up on the very positive sharing and writing experience that working on the Comics Is… Defining Comics Studies book meant for many of us (also: super honored to be included in the book! I wrote about it and the two academic comics I made as contribution here.)
There is more. A month ago I had the honor to keynote the Kuplii Goes Academic conference in Tampere, Finland, which is an exciting little event surveying what is going on in comics studies in the country–while there is a huge comic con going on.
I am excited and grateful about this unexpected turn of my life: back to academia after almost giving up. And it all started with KINDNESS: I could attend the graphic medicine-themed conference organized by the German comics studies society (ComFor) in Groningen, Netherlands, only because my friend Barbara Postema (check out her publications!) allowed me to sleep in her living room (I did not have money for a hotel). Then I was invited to Brussels… Then I got a job! (Until 31 Decemer 2026. I am happy to have my first academic job!)
Let us be kind and generous researchers and academics. 🙂
Eszter Szép 