M’quidech est un personnage mythique du patrimoine culturel algérien, plus précisément berbère. Il s’agit d’un petit garçon courageux qui lutte contre les dangers qui s’infligent sur les gens de sa petite communauté. Â partir de 1969, ce personnage fut exploité dans le cadre du roman graphique algérien, en bande dessinée, par Ahmed Haroun (considéré comme l’un des premiers illustrateurs algériens) . Cette bande dessinée illustre les aventures de m’quidech dans un cadre oscillant entre l’héroïsme mythique, le folklore oral et la culture algérienne. Dans notre présentation, nous allons plonger dans le paysage culturel et mythologique algérien tout en analysant le roman graphique en question selon, premièrement, une perspective sémio-narrative, ensuite transculturelle. Tout en mettant au centre le caractère d’héroïsme comme caractéristique principale de la construction narrative du personnage principal, notre étude se focalisera également sur les représentations socioculturelles de la notion d'héroisme dans les communautés nord africaines en général, et algérienne en particulier; le tout selon une perspective plus large avec les grandes formes graphique mondiales. Cette recherche se basera sur une comparaison littéraire et transculturelle de la notion d'héroisme dans la littérature graphique dans ces différentes traditions: européenne, nord américaine et asiatique ainsi que leurs dimensions éthniques et culturelles.

Graphic narratives have long been expert at portraying differing feats of heroism: this includes narratives of cape-wearing superheroes, but also, arguably, more recent medical memoirs about people living with illness. In my talk, I want to focus on a different kind of “heroism”: the heroism inherent in living a lesbian adolescence. In the past decade, there has been a plethora of lesbian coming-of-age narratives in comic form, including Maggie Thrash’s Honor Girl (2015) and Lost Soul, Be at Peace (2018), Mariko Tamaki and Rosemary Valero-O’Connell’s Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up with Me (2019), Eleanor Crewes’ The Times I Knew I was Gay (2020), Molly Knox Ostertag’s The Girl from the Sea (2021), Jillian and Mariko Tamaki’s Roaming (2023), and much of Tillie Walden’s oeuvre. I am interested in how within comics, which as an art form has long been linked to adolescence, creators have now carved out a space for a particular kind of adolescence – a lesbian one – to be put on the page. (Although arguably, there is a lesbian/bisexual precursor as far back as Wonder Woman.) In my analysis, I want to particularly focus on Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up with Me and The Girl from the Sea, two texts which at first glance seem vastly different: while Laura Dean is set in a high school and features only human characters, The Girl from the Sea is about a human girl falling in love with a female selkie, a Celtic mythological creature living in the sea. Both graphic narratives have a strong sense of place. In my talk, I want to explore how these texts depict lesbian desire, and a lesbian adolescence, both as something ordinary—something very much of a piece with the rest of the characters’ lives—and as something otherworldly and transporting, with the high school rendered just as strange as the sea’s edge.

In Tessa Hulls' graphic memoir Feeding Ghosts (2024), the convergence of visual and textual storytelling creates a uniquely powerful medium for exploring intergenerational trauma within Chinese American experience. This paper examines how the distinctive properties of graphic narrative enable the representation of trauma, postmemory, and cultural healing in ways that conventional narrative forms cannot achieve. Through close analysis of Hulls' visual-verbal strategies, this study reveals how the comics medium provides sophisticated tools for articulating experiences that often resist traditional narrative representation.

Drawing on Marianne Hirsch's theoretical framework of postmemory and Hillary Chute's groundbreaking work on graphic narratives as trauma texts, this analysis demonstrates how the formal elements of comics—including panel structure, page layout, visual metaphor, and text-image interaction—create a dynamic framework for processing inherited trauma and facilitating intergenerational healing. The study focuses on three crucial aspects of Hulls' work: the spatial architecture of comics as a mirror for traumatic memory, the visual-verbal representation of postmemory, and the transformative power of artistic creation in cultural healing.

First, the research examines how the structural elements of comics, particularly gutters and panel transitions, parallel the fragmentary nature of traumatic memory and its transmission across generations. Second, it analyzes how the synthesis of visual and verbal elements enables the complex representation of postmemory through techniques such as nested narratives, visual echoes, and temporal layering. Finally, it explores how the act of drawing itself becomes a method of cultural healing, enabling the reconstruction of fractured family narratives and the integration of disparate cultural identities.

This research makes a significant contribution to both trauma studies and comics studies by illuminating the unique capabilities of graphic narratives in representing and transforming inherited trauma. Through its examination of Feeding Ghosts, this paper demonstrates how the graphic memoir format serves not only as a witness to traumatic histories but also as a powerful vehicle for processing and transforming intergenerational trauma through artistic creation. The findings have implications for understanding both the theoretical foundations of trauma representation and the practical applications of graphic narrative in therapeutic and cultural contexts.

Cha Cha on the Bridge, written by Yoon Pil and illustrated by Jaeso, is a 60-episode webtoon that was first published in weekly installments in 2018 and later published as a two-volume graphic novel. It was the Grand Prize winner of the 2019 Science Fiction Awards in Korea. The soft-toned black and white pencil sketch illustrations provide a sharp contrast to the futuristic setting where human labor have been replaced by AI robots and massive data centers accessible to only a tiny handful of the elite can store and manipulate information to achieve desired outcomes.

In this webtoon, the two main protagonists are AI robots. “Cha Cha” is a humanoid robot that was introduced in the year 2030 to prevent humans from killing themselves on Mapo Bridge, a site notorious for its alarming suicide rate. “Ai,” who owns and operates a nursing home for the elderly, eventually learns about Cha Cha from the numerous residents who reminisce about “the Bridge” where they had almost ended their lives. Cha and Ai heroically save lives in a postmodern, posthuman society where robots have been programmed to be kind and perform tedious tasks, while humans have become cold and calculating machines that act upon their selfish impulses, heartlessly abusing and discriminate against children, women, and migrant workers.

“Cha Cha on the Bridge” explores what it means to be human, and how behaving like a warm, friendly human is so rare in contemporary society that the simple act of sharing a meal together, or making time to chat about personal matters with a colleague, seems to be a heroic feat. It also uncovers the arbitrariness of human values, such as when a War Robot’s killing of a human can make you a murderer or war hero, depending on circumstances. A few exceptional robots begin to think on their own, act and think as if they have free will, and desire to become human.

This comic can also be analyzed through the framework of Groensteen’s “postmodern turn.” The work is characterized by narrative disruption. Flashbacks from past and present are made confusing because the robots do not age and retain the identical appearance even after decades have passed, whereas the human characters show signs of wear.