This article examines the short-lived Marvel comic Misty (1985–1986), created by feminist cartoonist Trina Robbins, as a case study in how comics can invite and depend on reader participation. We draw on an archival collection of over 1,000 fan letters and fashion designs submitted to Misty, along with recent communications with former readers, to explore how children and young adults influenced both the published comic and its surrounding culture. We argue that readers’ contributions – ranging from clothing designs to story ideas – constituted a form of activism: they challenged corporate publishing practices, promoted new story directions, and built local fan communities. Highlighting the recent memories of Misty’s reader contributors, we show how engaging in the comic’s participatory culture could, in turn, have lasting effects on readers, shaping their confidence, career paths, and creative philosophies. By reframing Misty’s collective participatory culture as activism and placing it in conversation with readers’ personal memories, this study contributes to scholarship on comics, fandom, and memory: even small acts of reader engagement can transform both cultural texts and individual lives.

In this article, we identify the comics of the Real Cost of Prisons Project as graphic memory work that denaturalises ‘penal common sense’ and engages in graphic witnessing. To show how the United States’ ‘crime problem’ established a seemingly natural link between crime and incarceration, we first review the criminological aspects of American comics memory. Then, we demonstrate how The Real Cost of Prisons Comix reworks the historical and social dynamics of the American carceral regime through its abolitionist framework. We discuss the importance of the image–text form for abolitionist pedagogy by reflecting on the position of comics in carceral textual cultures and the use of these comics in activist education. Finally, we emphasise that the comics created by the Real Cost of Prisons Project should be understood as pedagogical tools in a broader abolitionist movement whereby the historical and social education initiated by memory work aims to ignite collaborative praxis. In this sense, we show that their activist memory work is a means to demystify the historical processes of carceral expansion, enabling its audience to develop historical consciousness.

Central to drawn representations of activism and memory are ideas of embodiment and trace. From DIY protest signs to craftivism, the articulation of protest and memory is connected to the handmade trace of a witnessing individual present in time and place. This is reflected in comics scholarship through the notion of the drawn line conveying subjective experience through the trace of the body.

This article will consider the relationship between witnessing, truth claims, autographic drawing, and memory at a moment when AI image-generation tools have called into question the connection of drawn traces to their origin in time, space, materiality, and the body.

Although a combination of critical AI theory and comics studies, this article will outline ways in which generative AI presents a challenge to these ideas. Through comparison of Joe Sacco’s graphic reportage with recent AI images of conflict and history, the article considers the truth claims of images that are the products of computational and algorithmic processes considered broadly.

Comics scholarship has been slow to critically respond to these new conditions, and the task of disentangling the human/non-human in ontologies of trace is now compounded by generative drawings, which represent the outcome of archival reappropriation defined by opaque algorithmic parameters. This article will explore theoretical assumptions around authenticity and truth claims in analogue, computational, algorithmic, and generative drawing practice and ask what kinds of theory and practice are appropriate if activist graphic memoir is to endure as documents of political memory.

While LGBTQIA+ identities are already mostly invisible in the Italian education system, the current anti-gender policies proposed by right-wing and far-right politicians risk further hindering an inclusive education. However, recent Italian graphic novels pave the way for a multifaceted representation of the LGBTQIA+ community and an alternative form of education. For instance, Nicoz Balboa’s Play with Fire (2020) and Alec Trenta’s Barba (2022) are two autofictional graphic novels that depict the authors’ discovery of their trans identity and their experiences in the cis-heteronormative society. The article argues that the two works by Balboa and Trenta are not just examples of autofiction but also constitute an archive of memory and activism. First, the article traces the damaging effects of a lack of education around LGBTQIA+ themes. Then, it explores how Balboa and Trenta understand their lives by reading LGBTQIA+ stories and histories. Crucially, the article investigates how both authors become a point of reference themselves by representing their own bodies and including explanations about gender and sexuality topics. Documenting the way Balboa and Trenta build a counter-educational space in their graphic novels and chart a literary queer and trans genealogy, the article ultimately suggests that their works are a form of activist practice.

Rotterdam, a city in the Netherlands, experienced significant bombing in its city centre during the Second World War. Despite the trauma associated with this event, in 1948, the city adopted a new motto: ‘Sterker Door Strijd’, translating as ‘Stronger Through Struggle’. This motto remains visible today under the city’s coat of arms, symbolising the resilience and strength of its inhabitants as they rebuilt their city. ‘Sterker Door Strijd’ has become a central aspect of Rotterdam’s development, particularly in its architecture and urban planning. It showcases a shift in the city’s memory from pain to pride and hope for the future. The motto beautifully embodies Rigney’s ‘memory–activism nexus’ from a spatial perspective, reconstructing the city’s traumatic memory of destruction into a narrative of resistance. The motto is widely known and felt by every Rotterdammer, including foreigners who live and work in the city, like me. The visual essay ‘From Struggle to Strength’ poetically focuses on the city of Rotterdam and its motto. It intimately follows my personal artistic journey and my embodiment in the city. The story unfolds as I walk and draw around the city. Additionally, I interviewed inhabitants focusing on the challenges of social housing issues in the city, such as displacement and demolition and considering how the residents are actively resisting these issues. Through these interactions, the visual essay reflects on the transformative power of memory and activism in shaping the city’s past, present and future.