Comics studies is an academic field that deals with comics. Within the field of cultural and media studies, comics studies and/or manga studies seem to be emerging. The study of comics as a medium focuses on three major aspects: examining production, industry, distribution, and authorship. Analyses look at media texts in terms of the content conveyed, the creation of comics, and the use of comics language. Studies also focus on the audiences, uses, and reception of comics.
Transversal approaches examine all three aspects, such as the genre, popular geopolitics, or subculture. The recent proliferation of international journals (year of foundation in parentheses), such as the International Journal of Comic Art (1999), Image and Narrative (2000), ImageText (2004), Mechademia (2006), European Comic Art(2008), Manga 10000 Images(2008), Studies in Comics (2010), Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics (2010), Sequantial Art Narrative in Education (2010), The Comics Grid (2011), and Scandinavian Journal of Comic Art (2012), show the spectacular institutionalization of independent comics studies.
Since the 1980s, independent centres for comic art in Belgium and France have functioned as both collections and museums. In the last two decades, comics research has been organized in several European countries. Germany has a society (ComFor), the Czech Republic and Hungary have university research centres for comics studies (Centrum pro studia komiksu,and Képregénytudományi Kutatóközpont, respectively), and comics research is particularly active in the Nordic countries.
