Table of Contents and Editorial

Do Comics Have Electric Dreams? Comics And Technology

Abstract

The editorial of this issue of the International Journal of Film and Media Arts explores the evolving relationship between comics and technology, arguing that comics have always been deeply intertwined with technological systems. Rather than viewing digital tools and artificial intelligence as disruptive breaks from tradition, the editors frame them as intensifications of a long-standing coevolution between comics production, circulation, and technological mediation. Drawing on perspectives from media theory, cognition studies, and platform capitalism, the editorial reflects on how contemporary technologies increasingly shape creative labour, reader experience, and cultural production.

The issue situates comics within broader debates surrounding automation, AI-assisted creativity, digital infrastructures, and the reorganisation of labour under computational systems. At the same time, it emphasises that comics are not passive recipients of technological change, but active sites where new forms of narrative, spatiality, sound, and multimodal interaction emerge.

The collection brings together interdisciplinary contributions examining topics such as digital comics theory, augmented and virtual reality comics, AI-generated music for manga, AI-assisted sequential storytelling, and the integration of sound technologies into comics reading experiences. Across these studies, the issue highlights how comics and technology continually reshape one another aesthetically, materially, and socially.

Ultimately, the editorial presents comics as a dynamic and technologically mediated art form whose future lies in hybrid experimentation, critical reflection, and the ongoing negotiation between human creativity and digital systems.