Studies of material culture can open a window to understanding meaning and interaction. Objects are the focus of study and it is no surprise that very specialized foci crop up with communities of serious scholars investigating a certain type of object. Such is The Comics Grid, an open access journal that “aims to make original, media-specific contributions to the field of comics scholarship and to advance the appreciation of comic art.”
While your childhood entertainment likely included reading comics and comic books, these artifacts are a part of human existence and therefore of scholarly interest. The Comics Grid is just one example of the many resources in the study of comics, see also, just a few more examples:
the University of Florida’s resources page for comics studies
The International Journal of Comic Art
Needless to say, there is plenty of contentious quibbling about whether comics scholarships is, well, you know scholarship. But, of course, it is, although that doesn’t mean it is all good. But what is absolutely true is that comics are created by humans and, as such, like any other human made artifact they are culturally interesting.
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