A Readers’ History of Girls’ Comics: A Review of Remembered Reading : Remembered Reading. Memory, Comics and Post-War Constructions of British Girlhood, Mel Gibson, ‘Studies in European Comics and Graphic Novels’ series, Leuven University Press, 224 pages, 2015, ISBN: 9789462700307

Abstract

In her monograph Remembered Reading ( 2015), Mel Gibson builds on her field work, interviews and meetings with readers of girls’ comics to recover the history and memory of this forgotten genre. Drawing on these shared memories and recollections, Gibson presents a readers’ history of British girls’ comics that reveals how these readings were part of identity constructions and personal histories, tied up to public factors of gender, age and class. In doing so, Gibson revises many stereotypes that have characterized girls’ comics, sketches a much more nuanced picture of the genre, and highlights the complexity of readers’ engagement with comics.