Aging in/with Comics

In March 2022, the article “Aging in/with Comics: Processes of Selection and Reflection” was published in Closure Journal’s special issue entitled Being Old - or Doing Age? Drafting Age in Comics.

This paper reports on the findings from a project by Dr. Nicole Dalmer and Dr. Lucia Cedeira Serantes funded by the American Library Association’s Carnegie Whitney Grant. In response to the rapid demographic shift towards older ages, Nicole and Lucia first developed a reading list that both collects and showcases comics that depict a variety of older adult characters and experiences of aging. This list works to reveal how shifts in demographics are captured by popular media and how these artifacts can impact feelings of identity in later life. This article, in particular, represents reflections and conversations from the 2019 Comics Studies Society conference, the 2019 Graphic Medicine conference, the 2019 Canadian Society for the Study of Comics conference, and more formally in a chapter “Imag(in)ing aging futures in comics and graphic novels” published in an edited Policy Press collection, titled Ageing and the media: International perspectives.