Out now: JPR Special Issue 4.2 “Perpetrators in Comics”!

We are happy to announce the publication of the latest special issue of the Journal of Perpetrator Research!

The JPR special issue “Perpetrators in Comics,” guest edited by Laurike in ‘t Veld, brings together contributions that engage with portrayals of the figure of the perpetrator and the theme of perpetration in comics across different historical and geographical contexts. The articles in the issue offer comprehensive and nuanced analyses of the strategies graphic narratives deploy in dealing with perpetrator figures and the complexities and ambivalences often brought forward by their representation. The contributors draw on perpetrator studies scholarship, comics scholarship, and publications in other related areas, including African American studies, genocide studies, and Indigenous studies, offering a multidisciplinary approach to the topic of the representation of perpetrators in the medium of comics.

The issue features an Introduction by Laurike in ‘t Veld, where she provides a state of the art on the depiction of perpetrators in comics and traces the shifts in the scholarly attention to their representation.

The issue continues with five full-length research articles: Laurike in ‘t Veld explores the stylistic possibilities of comics to address questions of familial complicity during World War II through an analysis of three graphic narratives – Peter Pontiac’s Kraut: Biografiek (2000), Nora Krug’s Belonging: A German Reckons with History and Home (2018), and Serena Katt’s Sunday’s Child (2019). Tatiana Konrad demonstrates how the medium-specific features of the graphic novel adaptation of Octavia E. Butler’s Kindred (1979) address the legacy of slavery in the American context by connecting past and present and visualizing implication through time. Olga Michael explores how Nina Bunjevac’s graphic memoir Fatherland (2014) foregrounds the effects of intergenerational trauma and complicates straightforward notions of the perpetrator figure as ‘monstruous’ through medium-specific elements like braiding and visual motifs. Johannes Schmid discusses the representation of the cultural genocide of Canada’s Indigenous peoples in Joe Sacco’s Paying the Land (2020), exploring how the graphic narrative frames intracommunal Indigenous violence as a direct effect of the intergenerational trauma inflicted by the colonial violence of the Indian Residential School System (IRSS). In their analysis of the webcomic Hipster Hitler, Mihaela Precup and Dragoş Manea explore what is at stake when a historical perpetrator is displaced for comedic effect, investigating the ambiguities resulting from the interpolation of the figure of Hitler with the figure of the hipster in the webcomic.

The issue concludes with a Roundtable discussion between Christine Gundermann, Ewa Stańczyk, and Kees Ribbens, where they address various aspects of the representation of World War II and the Holocaust in comics, such as the depiction of perpetrators, the use of graphic narratives in education and the ways in which national contexts have affected the content and reception of these comics.

To download individual articles or the full issue, please go to: https://jpr.winchesteruniversitypress.org/9/volume/4/issue/2/