Folio: Essays on Australian Comics

by Ronnie Scott (Editor), Elizabeth MacFarlane (editor), Gabriel Clark (editor)

How are Australian comics made and read? How do changes in comics and graphic storytelling over the past forty years intersect with our changing ideas about history, culture, community, creativity and technology? 


In  Essays on Australian Comics, interdisciplinary scholars and world-leading makers pose questions about Australian comics, including through visual essays, asking how comics move out into community, industry, society, and disciplines both cognate and distant. 


It first examines the cultures and communities of Australian comics, from Indigenous cultural contexts to DIY zine fairs, and international markets to the graphic recording industry. It then focuses on practices and readings of individual comics, exploring individual practices and analysing Australian work, from government-commissioned comics with explicit social purpose to comics that employ augmented reality.


Chapter 2 is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

373 pages, Hardcover

Published August 21, 2025

About the author

Ronnie Scott writes essays and criticism for newspapers, websites and magazines. In 2007 he founded The Lifted Brow, an independent literary magazine. He's a Lecturer in the Writing and Publishing discipline at RMIT University. The Adversary is his first novel.