Girls in Comics

As the guest editors of this special issue of Girlhood Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal we invited comics and media scholars to discuss girlhood from the perspective of transnational and/or transmedia practices. These investigations avoid the trap Anita Harris warned us about in All about the Girl (2004) since they approach girlhood as a “constantly shifting” category, to use the words of Kristine Moruzi (2012: 191) rather than as a natural fixed state of being. Neither do they repeat the earlier tendency to conflate girlhood with womanhood (as can be seen, for instance, in Trina Robbins's From Girls to Grrlz (1999) and in Mike Madrid's The Supergirls (2009)). This special issue aligns with the work of scholars who study comics and girlhood with a focus on different publication formats (Gibson 2023), an international approach (Marshall 2018), and a transmedia interest (Hains 2012). The authors represented here consider girlhood as produced and negotiated; they recognize that girlhood implies a multiplicity of ages, social classes, ethnicities, and religions (as did, for instance, Marla Jaksch, Catherine Cymone Fourshey, and Relebohile Moletsane (2023) who edited Girlhood Studies 16:1: Reframing African Girlhood and Salsabel Almanssori and Muna Saleh whose Hijabi Girlhood in the Intersections: Violence, Resistance, Reclamation appeared later in 2023).