[Commlist] Call For Papers: Beyond the American Western: Picturing the Far West in Global Comics

Call For Papers: Beyond the American Western: Picturing the Far West in 
Global Comics


Proposals due 14^th December 2025. Queries: (williamebgrady /at/ gmail.com) 
<mailto:(williamebgrady /at/ gmail.com)>

The Western genre has been widely read within the confines of a national 
cinema and culture of the United States. However, the field of Film 
Studies has increasingly sought to emancipate the Western genre from 
discourses of American myth and identity, instead exploring its ongoing 
production, circulation, and reception beyond the borders of the United 
States (including Miller 2013; Higgins 2015; Mayer 2022, among many 
more). This body of work has significantly expanded our understanding of 
the Western’s transnational dimensions by highlighting the genre’s local 
rewritings on a global scale, and unpacking the complex transcultural 
negotiations involved in appropriating what is often considered an 
inherently American genre. Nevertheless, in the broad exploration of the 
ways in which the Western has been deterritorialized from its 
traditional American context, much of the focus on cinema leaves other 
visual storytelling forms underexplored.

One such example is the comics medium. The presence of Western adventure 
in non-American comics traditions dates back as early as the 1889 French 
album /La Famille Fenouillard/, in which artist Christophe introduces 
his globe-trotting Fenouillard family to the Wild West during their 
travels through North America. However, comics have a rich history of 
imitating and reinterpreting the American Western for readers around the 
globe. Broadly speaking, Western comics bring together pulp fiction’s 
formulaic approach to frontier adventure stories about vengeance, 
conquest and justice with the dynamic visual storytelling properties of 
comics, which give dramatic life to the genre’s gunfights, high-stakes 
horseback pursuits, and mesmerizing desert vistas. Beyond the thrilling 
yarns about law and order, exploration and discovery, or colonial 
fantasies regarding violent white encroachment on Indigenous land, 
comics globally have vividly engaged with the Western. They have 
transformed the genre in weird and wonderful ways to suit local tastes, 
used its mythical/historical distance as a cover to dramatize 
contemporaneous social and political concerns, and provided captivated 
readers outside the US with an accessible window into the enthralling 
world of the Far West. Coupled with the lack of creative limitations 
afforded by the hand-drawn form, the small production teams involved in 
comics (typically a writer, artist, and editor), and the relatively low 
production and distribution costs, I have argued elsewhere that “comics 
democratized the American Western for global audiences” (Grady 2024).

Drawing on a number of recent studies on the subject (including Huxley 
2018; Conway 2022; Martinez 2023), I have observed that “as the fields 
of Western Studies and Comics Studies strive to expand beyond the 
confines of established canons, chronologies and corpuses, one fertile 
area for new enquiry it seems is the vibrant history of comics and the 
fabled West” (Grady 2023). This edited collection is put forward in the 
same spirit, and seeks to expand the scholarly conversations about the 
global production and circulation of the American Western, exploring the 
many ways in which the genre has been reappropriated, reimagined, and 
retold in comics from across different countries and contexts.

Proposals are sought that might consider (but are not limited to) the 
following topics:

-Surveys of the Western genre in specific national comics traditions 
(from France, Canada, or Mexico, to India, Japan, and beyond).

-Case studies of specific stand-out Western comics titles (e.g. 
Belgium’s /Lucky Luke/ (from 1946), Italy’s /Tex Willer/ (from 1948), 
Argentina’s /Sgt. Kirk /(from 1953)).

-Creator-focused studies (e.g. the Westerns of Giraud/Moebius, Hermann, 
Derib).

-Comparative analysis of American and non-American Western comics.

-The translation and adaptation of Western comics.

-The influence of American comics and film upon “foreign” Western comics.

-Subversions, critiques, or parodies of the American Western in comics.

-The Western as a lens to explore colonial histories and imperial legacies.

-The representation of race, gender, sexuality, environmental issues, 
and so on.

-The discussion of national identity, society, and politics through the 
Western.

-Examining Western themes and iconographies in other genre comics (genre 
mash ups like Britain’s /2000AD/ (from 1977), South Korea’s /Priest/ 
(from 1998), and so on).


Interested researchers are invited to submit a 350 word proposal (and a 
short bio) outlining the content and aims of their chapter to William 
Grady ((williamebgrady /at/ gmail.com) <mailto:(williamebgrady /at/ gmail.com)>), on 
or before 14^th December 2025. Informal queries are also welcome. 
Authors will be formally notified of their acceptance by 16^th January 
2026. Full chapters of between 5,000 and 7,000 words will be expected in 
October 2026.

Bibliography

-Conway, Christopher & Antoinette Sol (ed.). /The Comic Book Western: 
New Perspectives on a Global Genre/. University of Nebraska Press, 2022.

-Grady, William. /Redrawing the Western: A History of American Comics 
and the Mythic West/. University of Texas Press, 2024.

-Grady, William. “The Comic Book Western.” /Studies in Comics/ 14.1, 
2023, pp.151-154.

-Higgins, MaryEllen, et al. (ed.). /The Western in the Global South/. 
Routledge, 2015.

-Huxley, David/. Lone Heroes and the Myth of the American West in Comic 
Books, 1945–1962/. Springer, 2018.

-Martinez, Nicolas. /Reframing Western Comics in Translation/. 
Routledge, 2023.

-Mayer, Hervé, and David Roche (ed.). /Transnationalism and Imperialism: 
Endurance of the Global Western Film/. Indiana University Press, 2022.

-Miller, Cynthia J., and A. Bowdoin Van Riper (ed.). /International 
Westerns: Re-Locating the Frontier/. Scarecrow Press, 2013.


Communication and Media Studies scholars are welcome. No payment from 
the authors will be required.






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