Katharina Serles‘ article makes a substantial theoretical and methodological contribution to comics studies by systematically examining how comics utilize art-historical visual references to reveal and challenge gender orders, processes of canon formation and power relations. Proceeding from the thesis that comics, as a hybrid, anti-hegemonic medium, are predestined to critically reflect on art-historical canons, Serles analyses a broad corpus of comics focusing on the German-speaking realm. She demonstrates that whilst comics frequently perpetuate a white, Western, male art canon, they simultaneously employ specific aesthetic strategies to subvert and rewrite these lines of tradition. To this end, the article develops a nuanced typology of visual references – ranging from reproduction and homage through appropriation to subversive reinterpretation – and links these to questions of art theory, gender studies and queer-feminist theory. (Susanne Hochreiter)

“Body, Art, and Canon: (Queer) Feminist Appropriation of Art in Comics” is part of the innovative handbook “Comics Studies x Gender Studies. Intersections of Research, Teaching, and Practice”, co-edited by Katharina Serles, funded by FWF, and published by de Gruyter as an open access publication in 2025. The title’s “x” stands for intersection(s) and multiplication, as comic studies and gender studies complement each other productively. The alternative reader provides a compact anthology of artistic, didactic and pedagogial, academic, and (artistic) essayistic / student perspectives on intersectional categories and also illustrates the connection between research, teaching, and practice.