In Sweden, publication of original feminist comics started in the 1970s and increased during the following decade. This article describes and analyses the Swedish feminist comics published in the Swedish radical journals Kvinnobulletinen and Vi Mänskor, as well as in the Fnitter anthologies. These comics, representing radical feminism, played an important role as forums for debate in a time when feminist comics were considered avant-garde. The most prominent themes were, first, the body, love and sexualities and, second, the labour market and legal rights. The most frequent visual style was a black contour line style on a white background, recalling the comics of Claire Bretécher, Aline Kominsky-Crumb and Franziska Becker. Humour and satire, including irony, were used as strategies to challenge the patriarchy and to contest the prevailing idea that women have no sense of humour.
The aim of this article is to analyse contemporary feminist comics by the Swedish comics artists Åsa Grennvall/Schagerström, Lotta Sjöberg and Sara Granér in relation to the ongoing movement called craftivism, as defined by Betsy Greer and her fellow crafters. The article argues that embroidered feminist comics can be regarded as comics craftivism, since, although similar to drawings, they are all sewn by needle and thread, and often thematise topics connected to craftivism's ideas concerning 'raising consciousness, creating a better world stitch by stitch'. The comics artists use embroidered comics to create 'wider conversations about uncomfortable issues', e.g. feminist issues, such as being trapped in a violent relationship as in Schagerström's cover image for Svinet [The Swine], or the unequal sharing of household work in Sjöberg's sequential story in Det kan alltid bli värre. [It can always get worse]. The feminist, craftivist comics artists are engaged in the politics of the handmade -narrating through textiles. The content concerns political, environmental and gender issues. Comics craftivism contributes to the renewal of the comics medium, and while experimenting artistically with materials and techniques, practitioners thematise new ideas as well as new perspectives on lingering problems, often with irony and humour.
This special issue aims to contribute to a discussion on how to write comics into art history and art history into comics research. What methodological issues are involved regarding the visuality and materiality of comics, the temporality and movement in comics and the characteristic word-image feature of comics? How could research on comics in the broader field of art history and visual studies add perspectives to research on comics in other disciplines? In the article "Comics studies in the Nordic Countries-Field or Discipline?", published in the Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics in , the Swedish comics researcher Fredrik Strömberg argues that establishing an independent comics studies discipline would facilitate research in the field. We would, however, rather wish to emphasize the positive aspects of interdisciplinary studies based on the methods of several disciplines, visually based as well as verbal, or historical, sociological, etc. Comics and graphics novels are characterized by an intermedial structure combining words and images. Although clearly a phenomenon where the visual aspects stand out as key features, traditionally comics have not been given much scholarly attention in the discipline of art history. Sequential and narrative elements of comics tend to place the media in literary and language studies, and acclaimed research results have been achieved by applying narrative, linguistic,
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