Mapping World Comics: A Review of How Comics Travel: Publication, Translation, Radical Literacies

Abstract

Katherine Kelp-Stebbins, How Comics Travel: Publication, Translation, Radical Literacies. The Ohio State University Press, 254 pages, 2022, ISBN 9780814215043, 19 b&w illustrations.This review responds to Katherine Kelp-Stebbins’ monograph How Comics Travel: Publication, Translation, Radical Literacies (Ohio State University Press, 2022). This book integrates cultural, translation and comic studies to map out the uneven power distance in international cultural circulation from a ‘translational and anticolonial’ perspective. It puts comic reading in a worldly frame that draws attention to the uniqueness of each culture and rethinks the understanding of comics’ contribution to reinforcing or shattering the borders between cultures, which makes it inspiring reading for readers from both translation studies and comics studies, especially those who are interested in post-colonial research on cultural interactions and power dynamics.

Keywords

• cultural studies
• multimodal translation
• post-colonialism
• worldliness
• cross-cultural comics