Sugar, Spice, and the Not So Nice: Comics Picturing Girlhood

251 Pages·2023·23.581 MB·English

by  Dona Pursall (editor), Eva Van De Wiele (editor)

studies in european comics and graphic novels
Sugar, Spice, and the Not So Nice offers an innovative, wide-ranging and geo- S
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graphically diverse book-length treatment of girlhood in comics. The vari- g
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ous contributing authors and artists provide novel insights into established r, S Sugar, Spice,
themes within comics studies, children’s comics, graphic medicine and com- p
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ics by and about refugees and marginalised ethnic or cultural groups. The c
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, and the Not So Nice
book enriches traditional historical, narratological and aesthetic approaches a
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to studying girlhood in comics with practice-based research, discussion and d
conversation. This re-examination of girls, gender and identity in comics th
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connects with contemporary discourse on gender identity politics. Through N
examples from both within Europe, the anglophone world and beyond, and o
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including visual essays alongside critical theory, the volume furthermore S Dona Pursall, Eva Van de Wiele (eds)
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engages with new developments in contemporary comics scholarship. It will N
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therefore appeal to students and scholars of childhood studies, comics schol- c
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ars and creators, and those interested in addressing gender identity through C
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Dona Pursall is PhD student on the ERC project “Children in Comics” of ic
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Prof. Maaheen Ahmed at Ghent University and is co-supervised by Prof. Jan u
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Eva Van de Wiele is postdoctoral researcher on the ERC project “Children in lh
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Sugar, Spice, and the Not So Nice
STUDIES IN
EUROPEAN COMICS
11
AND GRAPHIC NOVELS
Editorial board
Hugo Frey, Editor-in-Chief (University of Chichester)
Jan Baetens (KU Leuven)
Bart Beaty (University of Calgary)
Christopher Pizzino (University of Georgia)
Ann Miller (University of Leicester)
Sugar, Spice,
and the Not So Nice
Comics Picturing Girlhood
Edited by
Dona Pursall and Eva Van de Wiele
LEUVEN UNIVERSITY PRESS
This edited volume is an outcome of the COMICS project funded by the European Research Council
(ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agree-
ment no. 758502).
Also published with the support of the KU Leuven Fund for Fair Open Access.
© 2023 by Leuven University Press / Presses Universitaires de Louvain / Universitaire Pers Leuven
Minderbroedersstraat 4, B-3000 Leuven (Belgium)
Selection and editorial matter © Dona Pursall and Eva Van de Wiele, 2023
Individual chapters © The respective authors, 2023
This book is published under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Non-Derivative 4.0
Licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
Attribution should include the following information: Dona Pursall and Eva Van de Wiele (eds.), Sugar,
Spice, and the Not So Nice: Comics Picturing Girlhood. Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2023. (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)
Unless otherwise indicated all images are reproduced with the permission of the rights-holders
acknowledged in captions and are expressly excluded from the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence covering the
rest of this publication. Permission for reuse should be sought from the rights-holders.
ISBN 978 94 6270 361 2 (paperback)
ISBN 978 94 6166 497 6 (epdf)
ISBN 978 94 6166 498 3 (epub)
https://doi.org/10.11116/9789461664976
D/2023/1869/7
NUR: 617
Typesetting: Crius Group
Cover design: Johan Van Looveren
Cover illustration: Original cover art by Valentine Gallardo
To Valentine Gallardo for her image,

To Joe Sutliff Sanders, Julia Round and Mel Gibson
for their commitment to the conference

Contents
Preface 9
Introduction 11
Dona Pursall and Eva Van de Wiele
Chapter 1. ‘It’s the girl!’ : Comics, Professional Identity, Affection, Nostalgia
and Embarrassment 29
Mel Gibson
Chapter 2. Looking for Queerness 47
Martha Newbigging
Chapter 3. Harrowing Rites of Passage : Refugee Girlhood in the Wake of
Syrian Migrant Crisis 57
María Porras Sánchez
Chapter 4. Comics, Caregiving and Crip Time 75
JoAnn Purcell
Chapter 5. Discussing Gender in a Communist Comics Magazine :
Corinne et Jeannot, 1970 89
Sylvain Lesage
Chapter 6. The Ambivalence of Girlhood and Motherhood in A Girl-and-
Her-Dog Comics Series : Margot & Oscar Pluche / Sac à Puces 107
Benoît Glaude
7
Contents
Chapter 7. Modernity, Aesthetics and the Active Female Body in Mirabelle
(1960–1967) 127
Joan Ormrod
Chapter 8. The Demon Girl of Malayali Comic Strips : The (Im)possibilities
of Comic Imagination 149
Aswathy Senan
Chapter 9. Reading Girl- and Womanhood in the Classic Flemish Family
Comics Series Jommeke: A Conversation with Katrien De Graeve and
Sara De Vuyst 167
Michel De Dobbeleer
Chapter 10. Death and the Maiden : Some Notes Concerning Charlotte
Salomon’s Leben? oder Theater? 191
Sébastien Conard
Chapter 11. Developing a Style of Her Own: Mophead by Selina Tusitala
Marsh (2019) 199
Marine Berthiot
Conclusion 223
Eva Van de Wiele
Afterword: Picturing Girlhood 229
Julia Round
About the Authors 235
Index 239
8
Preface
This volume brings together some of the papers presented at the digital symposium
Sugar and Spice, and the Not So Nice: Comics Picturing Girlhood, organised on 22
and 23 April 2021 at Ghent University. It also features some research initiatives that fol-
lowed, inspired by our conference.
To learn about all of the papers that were presented, some of which did not end up
in this collection, we refer to Julia Round’s afterword in this volume, and to our digital
report for Comics Forum, which features graphic renderings by John Miers and Dragana
Radanovic: https://comicsforum.org/2021/06/14/symposium-report-sugar-and-spice-and-
the-not-so-nice-comics-picturing-girlhood/. For inspiration from what was interchanged
in the lively discussions during the conference, we wish to direct readers to our Padlet:
padlet.com/eva_vandewiele/ComicsPicturingGirlhood. To keep the conversation going,
we invite readers to use the hashtag #Comicspicturinggirlhood on Twitter.
Both the Girlhood Conference and this volume are an outcome of the COMICS
project funded by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s
Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (Grant agreement No. [758502]). We
warmly thank every artist and author involved in this editorial adventure.
Finally, we are grateful to the directors of the series for considering our volume, and
to the editors, reviewers and editorial staff at Leuven University Press for their support
and feedback. The KU Leuven Fund for Fair Open Access also made it possible for us to
publish this volume and circulate it widely.
Dona Pursall and Eva Van de Wiele
9