Young People, Comics and Reading

Scholars and professionals interested in the study and engagement with young people will find this project relevant to deepening their understanding of reading practices with comics and graphic novels. Comics reading has been an understudied experience despite its potential to enrich our exploration of reading in our currently saturated media landscape. This Element is based on seventeen in-depth interviews with teens and young adults who describe themselves as readers of comics for pleasure. These interviews provide insights about how comics reading evolves with the readers and what they consider a good or bad reading experience. Special attention is paid to the place of female readers in the comics community and material aspects of reading. From these readers, one begins to understand why comics reading is something that young people do not 'grow out of' but an experience that they 'grow with'.