‘It’s the girl!’: Comics, Professional Identity, Affection, Nostalgia and Embarrassment

Gibson, Mel (2023) ‘It’s the girl!’: Comics, Professional Identity, Affection, Nostalgia and Embarrassment. In: Sugar, Spice, and the Not So Nice Comics Picturing Girlhood. Studies in European Comics and Graphic Novels (11). Leuven University Press, Leuven, pp. 29-46. ISBN 9789462703612, 9789461664983, 9789462700307, 9789461664976

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Abstract

This chapter explores relationships between gender, professional identity, and personal history in relation to the comic strip medium. I take an autoethnographic approach to this topic, outlining my identity as a female British library professional intensely engaged with graphic novels in the 1990s, a contemporary development in the medium at that point, and that of being a girlhood comics reader from the 1960s onwards. The chapter goes on to locate the tensions I experienced around gender and comics in a wider context in which I played a significant role, that being the development and promotion of graphic novel collections in British public libraries during 1990s and into the twenty-first century.

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