Comic-Con 2026

Centered on San Diego State University's Comic Arts Collection, this panel explores how a comics archive can serve as a unifying framework for interdisciplinary teaching, collaborative scholarship, and innovative pedagogy. Pamela Jackson (San Diego State University) examines the librarian's role in curating collections and how the collection itself became a catalyst for curricular growth. Elizabeth Pollard (San Diego State University) and Mary Stout (San Diego State University) then offer course-based case studies that draw directly on special collections. Finally, Laurence Grove (University of Glasgow) reflects via video on developing a comics history course structured around "ten treasures" from the collection, offering a model for teaching the long history of comics through archival strengths. This discussion highlights how comics collections can anchor meaningful, research-driven teaching across disciplines.

This session explores how comics construct meaning through serial storytelling, reinterpretation, race, and political memory. Paul Young (Dartmouth College) shows how early Hulk comics helped shape Marvel's serialized universe-building through cyclical transformation narratives and crossovers. Francisco Sáez de Adana (University of Alcalá) reinterprets Vitaliti's contemporary artistic reworking of El Eternauta, focusing on how a classic comic work can be reinterpreted to extract meanings that underlie the original as well as to build new ones. Johnathan Flowers (California State University, Northridge) investigates the act of racebending as a form of counter-narrative that exposes systemic racism and white supremacy embedded in superhero culture and fandom. Daniel Ambord considers how comics confront misinformation and "toxic nostalgia," proposing an anti-fascist interpretive framework for engaging classic characters and stories.

In this roundtable, three historians discuss the intersection of Cold War and comic book history. Starting with a conversation about their field-specific approaches to postwar comics, they contextualize various comic genres in broader historical context. R. Joseph Parrott (The Ohio State University) argues that Silver Age stories, even more than promoting Cold War anti-communism, consistently revisited World War II as part of the national mythmaking that laid the foundations of U.S. internationalism. Sydney Heifler (The Ohio State University) explores the overt communist plotlines that appeared in romance comics, providing an overview of how changes in representations of sexual desire serve as a better index of the era's McCarthyistic tensions. Sean O'Brien (Wayne State University) highlights the decisions that went into making such comics. Touching on the labor side of comic production, he explains what was happening behind the scenes within companies, which informed (or contested) what was being printed. The roundtable concludes with a brief overview of the future of comics in the field of history and what each historian hopes to see emerge as best practices.

Comics can be tools for activism, public memory, historical critique, and cultural transformation. Aaron Humphrey (Adelaide University) traces a century of comics created in internment camps and immigration detention centers, arguing for their importance both as historical testimony and as influences on contemporary graphic novels. Logan Uber describes how comics and cartoon mascots such as Smokey Bear and Mark Trail shaped environmental consciousness within the American conservation movement. Priel Cohanim (Ben-Gurion University of the Negev) examines archival practices in the manga Frieren: Beyond Journey's End, unraveling its critique of political power in storytelling and historical archives. Jessica Boykin (South Mountain Community College) argues that nonfiction resistance comics published after March offer "liberatory counternarratives" that reshape public memory by centering marginalized voices and histories often excluded from mainstream accounts.

Veteran stories are often treated as if they end when the uniform comes off, but for many, that is where the real story begins. Meghan Camarena (Radiant Pink, Pokémon Trainer Tour) moderates a conversation with Sandra Winn (consultant, The Dead Lucky; producer), Todd Wesche (host of Vets With Benefits, Vetus Legal), Melissa Flores (Power Rangers Prime, The Dead Lucky), Drea Letamendi, Ph.D. (psychologist, UCLA), Marc Guggenheim (Arrow, Legends of Tomorrow), and Christopher Sean (Ultraman: Rising, Star Wars Resistance) about how comics, fandom, and popular culture can help veterans and military-connected communities rebuild identity, process transition, move beyond stereotypes, and reclaim the parts of themselves changed by service.

Was Superman the first superhero and the originator of the superhero genre? No. Matthew Warner Osborn (UM-Kansas City) discovered the Night Hawk in The Mechanics Free Press in 1828, predating the Man of Steel by more than a century. The Night Hawk fits the Mission-Powers-Identity definition of the superhero devised by Peter Coogan (Institute for Comics Studies). In conversation with Coogan and historian Dr. Andrew Fogel (Skirball Cultural Center), Osborn lays out his discovery, names the man behind the cloak of America's first superhero, and discusses his forthcoming book Night Hawk: A Nineteenth Century Superhero and the Dawn of American Mass Culture (University of Chicago Press, 2026).

In an era of endless content, why do comics still cut through the noise? Brian Buccellato (Justice League vs. Godzilla vs. Kong), Carl Choi (publisher of 247 Comics), Heath Corson (Witness Point), Melissa Flores (The Dead Lucky), and Pornsak Pichetshote (The Good Asian) discuss relevance, representation, and the power of visual storytelling. Moderated by Mickey Finnegan (content creator, Swagglehaus), this panel tackles where comics are headed and why they still matter.

Nicole Maines (actor, writer), Sami DeMonster (community manager, Tiny Onion), Viktor Kerney (writer, board member, Prism Comics), and Kickxy Vixen (drag queen, cosplayer) gather to discuss their geeky careers, seeking diversity and representation, and how being a member of the community influenced their work. Special performance by Kickxy Vixen. Moderated by Julian Jetson (host, stylist).

Panelists Jimmy Sherfy (San Diego's King of Cosplay), Melissa Gene Meyer (Girl at the Con), and Elle Luevanos (illustrator) discuss the history and future of Japanese queer media.

The Sweet Sixteenth show closes out night one of SDCC with a discussion of the latest MARVEL x Magic: The Gathering set. Guest Chris Mancini (writer/producer; founder, White Cat Entertainment) appears with host Joseph H. Johnson, Jr. (actor, comedian), plus additional guests.