Between narrative and visuality: body and power as a starting point for research in comics

Abstract

In recent decades, comics have established themselves as a legitimate object of academic investigation, especially within the fields of language, culture, and gender studies. This article offers an introductory reflection on potential paths for research into comics, taking the relationship between graphic form, body, and power as its starting point. Based on the premise that comics constitute a specific language, characterized by the interplay of text, image, and spatial organization of the page, the article discusses the importance of considering visual materiality as a central dimension of analysis and examines the depiction of Ms. Marvel in her debut series as a case study. The analysis reveals how different narrative levels, articulated through plot and modes of presentation, generate regimes of visibility that permeate representations of the feminine. It argues that attending to graphic form makes it possible to identify tensions between narrative discourses of emancipation and visual structures that reinscribe gender hierarchies. By connecting comics studies, cultural studies, and gender studies, this article aims to contribute to the consolidation of comics as a research field and to provide conceptual tools for researchers interested in conducting studies in this area.