Science Needs Comics! (and how you can make a good one)
Comics aren’t just about fictional superheroes and cats who hate Mondays. They can be designed to effectively communicate research with wide audiences. ArcticNet’s Knowledge Mobilization Manager, Melody Lynch, interviewed Hugh Goldring, comic writer and partner at Petroglyph Studios, to learn about the process of creating comics for sharing scientific knowledge, including how to secure funding and making sure comics are effective.
Melody: Welcome Hugh! Thanks for chatting with us about comics for knowledge mobilization. To begin, can you introduce us to Petroglyph Studios?
Hugh: So, Petroglyph Studios is a worker-owned knowledge mobilization studio that specializes in adapting research into comics. We started adapting scholarship into comics in 2015 when we began work on ‘The Beast’, a comic that explored the research themes of Patrick McCurdy, a communications professor who studies how we talk about climate change. Since then, we’ve partnered with scholars, unions, groups like Amnesty International and activists to support their work.
Melody: Why does science need comics?
Hugh: For me, the first answer that comes to mind is a hopeful one. From kids’ shows like the Magic School Bus to science fiction novels aimed at adults, the arts have a crucial role to play in making future generations of scientists. I think science needs comics to remind people that science is the work of finding answers and that this work has transformed our world for the better.
More pessimistically, I don’t think the answer to this question has ever been more obvious. We’re in a moment of growing distrust and declining scientific literacy. Broad swathes of the public are skeptical or disbelieving of settled science around everything from climate change to vaccines. Not just human life but the health of the entire biosphere is endangered by this ignorance.
Comics are just one piece of the solution to this enormous problem. They’re fun, approachable and unpretentious. People who might be intimidated or skeptical of something more formal will pick up a comic and flip through it. People don’t change their minds like a light switch – it’s more of an accumulation of experience, social relationships and information. But comics can help people get there. They also have an important role to play in inoculating readers against misinformation.
“We’re in a moment of growing distrust and declining scientific literacy…comics have an important role to play in inoculating readers against misinformation”
Melody: Can you share one of your favourite comics that you’ve produced, and tell us a little about the impact it has had?
Hugh: So, this is tough, because I’m very proud of all the work we’ve done. One that comes to mind is a short comic we did for kids in the Bidi Bidi Refugee Settlement in Uganda. The comic was designed with blank panels but depicted kids speaking with authority figures. It was given to real kids in the camp who had experienced sexual violence, and they used the template to describe how they wanted service providers to speak with them about their experience. The results were encouraging! Of course, I’m also very proud of the comic we did about the IPCC, which was translated into Slovak and distributed to thousands of school aged kids in Slovakia.
Melody: Those are both great projects aimed at children. Do you have a favorite project you did for an adult audience?
Hugh: Definitely! It can be hard to pick favorites, but I am very proud of ‘Transitions’, a comic we did that communicated the findings of a long study on outcomes for refugees resettled in the UK. The comic was designed to be a tool for front line service providers, to give them a sense of challenges commonly faced by successful refugee claimants and best practices for helping them flourish in their new homes.
Melody: For scientists looking to make a comic from their own work, what are the steps to follow?
Hugh: I think this question is a little bit open-ended! In brief, scholars should select research they’d like to adapt, identify the artist partners they want to work with, secure funding, figure out who the project is for, how it’ll be used, what the timeline for production is, this kind of thing. This means bringing in the group you’re interested in producing the material for so that you can consult with them throughout the production process, to make sure the final product is useful to them. Then, in collaboration with artists, the comics production process itself: brainstorming, writing, editing and illustration. Finally, there remains the question of publicizing and circulation. If you want to publish something long, you’ll need a publisher. If it’s short, it’s a good idea to have a social media strategy. If you’re distributing it with community partners, you’ll need to collaborate with them.
It’s a lot of work! The value of working with a studio like ours is that we have been doing this work for ten years and are familiar with every part of the production process. Scholars can be as involved in that process as they like, but some have competing commitments, and they’re able to take a more supervisory role instead. They look over the work in phases and make sure it’s headed in the right direction.
Melody: How much does it cost to produce a comic?
Hugh: It depends on how long the project is and who you are working with. Different studios charge different rates and may have separate charges related to administrative costs or redraws. We have a flat, inclusive page rate to make things simpler on grant applications. Project management and shared expectations are key. How many hours of edits are included in the page rate? We use a flat rate because we know grants are a fixed resource and it’s important to bring the project home for the amount that was originally agreed upon. For anyone interested in our rates, we encourage them to reach out.
Melody: That elusive funding… how do we get it?
Hugh: Talk to your friendly neighborhood knowledge mobilization specialist! Seriously though, I wish I had a more comprehensive answer but there are a lot of little answers. The obvious one is to include knowledge mobilization in every grant you write. Beyond that, some universities have a staff person who can support you in access grant funding. They might have an obvious job title with ‘knowledge mobilization’ or ‘impact’ in the name, or it might be something broader like ‘advancement’. Anyone the university employs to support research activities should be able to help.
Broadly, I’d also add collaborative grants – either groups of scholars or community partnerships – tend to be for much larger amounts of money, so they are better suited if you want to produce a graphic novel. Depending on your area of research you may be able to find partners in adapting your work among indigenous groups, in industry or third-sector organizations like not for profits.
Possible funding sources include:
If you are an early career researcher, check out the Arctic Science to Art Contest, organized by APECS Canada in partnership with ArcticNet, the Centre d’Études Nordiques, and the Arctic Research Foundation.
Melody: How do we find the right artist to work with, and what does that working relationship look like?
Hugh: Working with an artist is a creative relationship and also a collaborative one. It’s important that you like the person you’re working with, or at least trust and respect them. In my experience scholars tend to pick an artist whose style they personally like. I get the impulse but I think the better advice here is to think about the style that’s popular with your target audience. Scholars should look for an artist with experience adapting scholarship into comics. As I mentioned above, it’s best to work with an artist-writer team. There are also rare talents who are both gifted comics writers as well as talented illustrators.
The most important thing about the working relationship is that it’s built on mutual trust. Some of our clients have co-authored scripts, while others have been content to look over the work we submit and evaluate how accurately it reflects their research. We’ve found value in both approaches!
List of artists
ArcticNet has compiled a list of artists who are interested in collaborating with researchers on knowledge mobilization projects. If you are looking for an artist to work with, check it out! If you are an artist and would like to be listed on our website, please email melody.lynch@arcticnet.ulaval.ca.
Melody: What makes a good comic?
Hugh: What makes a good comic is clear messaging, an attractive and consistent art style, and a strong concept. What makes a great comic is something else altogether. The best use of comics in knowledge mobilization is when they don’t even look like knowledge mobilization. They look like art. They integrate the themes and information of the research into the story of the comic so deftly that the reader learns without realizing that the intent of the comic was educational.
Feelings can sway people in ways that information doesn’t always. A comic that blends resonant emotional themes can make the difference. For example, the research might show a statistical increase in measles outbreaks linked to reduced vaccination rates. You can tell that story, or you can tell the story of a parent losing their child to measles. One of those is going to reach deeper into the consciousness of the reader than the other. A good comic makes you think. A great comic makes you feel.
“A good comic makes you think. A great comic makes you feel.”
Melody: How do we measure the impact of our comic?
Hugh: This depends very much on the target audience and the medium of publication. If the comic is released via social media, then there are tools that measure how far it traveled. If it is published as a conventional print book, then the publisher will have sales figures, and can tell you if it was assigned as a course text. If you work in an Indigenous community and produce a comic with and for that community, you can discuss with people in the community how it helped.
It can be hard to know – we have sometimes found out our work was assigned as a course text, used by an activist group or included in a campaign independent of our involvement. Our first comic, Dogs, was about the Arctic. And it was used by the writer, teacher and activist Chelsea Vowell to work with Inuit students in her class to discuss the history of the dog slaughter. That was a profound, unexpected impact, and the kind of thing to which we aspire.
If you have any questions about creating a comic from your own research, feel free to reach out to Hugh Goldring at Petroglyph Studios, and/or ArcticNet’s Knowledge Mobilization Manager, Melody Lynch.
Melody Lynch
ArcticNet Knowledge Mobilization Manager / Gestionnaire de la mobilisation des connaissances d'ArcticNet