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Reading Comics Through The Body, first comics monograph by Gareth Brookes

By John Freeman on February 20, 2026 • ( 0 )

Award-winning graphic novelist Dr Gareth Brookes first comics monograph, Reading Comics Through The Body, has been published by Palgrave Macmillan as part of their series aimed at comics academics, Palgrave Studies in Comics and Graphic Novels.

Reading Comics Through The Body: Embodiment and Materiality in the Making and Reading of Comics by Dr Gareth Brookes (Palgrave Studies in Comics and Graphic Novels, 2026)

Gareth, who graduated from the RCA in 2003, is a graphic novelist, comics scholar, print maker, textile artist, small press publisher, event organiser, and lecturer in Illustration Animation at Kingston University. He’s made experimental graphic novels and handmade comics utilising unusual materials such as embroidery, pressed flowers and fire.

He has published four graphic novels, one of which, The Black Project (2013, Myriad Editions), won Myriad’s First Graphic Novel Prize in 2012 and was included in the Sélection Officielle 2018 45e Festival International de la Bande Dessinée d’Angoulême. A Thousand Coloured Castles was also published by Myriad, and The Dancing Plague and The Compleat Angler by SelfMadeHero.

The Black Project by Gareth Brookes (Myriad Editions, 2012)

He has also contributed scholarship to the Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics and Studies in Comics and was a Visiting Research Fellow at Merton College, Oxford University last year.

In 2024, he received a PhD from UAL, researching materiality and the tactile imagination in comics, and this monograph reflects that research.

“Reading Comics Through The Body – Embodiment and Materiality in the Making and Reading of Comics is about what happens to comics theory when we privilege the relationship between materiality and the body in the analysis of comics,” Gareth says. “Focusing on how these factors relate to making, technological reproduction and the experience of reading comics, it aims to establish a new theoretical model for comics studies.

“Through a close consideration of how technologies of reproduction translate material and embodied traces into the surface of comics, the book argues that tactile and haptic encounters with these surfaces can organise the narrative structure of comics and affect the experience of reading them.

“The book aims to establish that comics can be thought of as networked sites of embodied encounter in which embodied responses become a register of meaning.”

Dr Julia Round, Editor of Studies in Comics and the series “Encapsulations: Critical Comics Studies” has described this academic work as “groundbreaking”.

“Brookes uses his own artistic practice and detailed critical analysis to reveal how materiality has been almost entirely overlooked in comics studies. He shows how comics formalism has extensively excavated elements such as semiotics or page layouts but said very little about physical form and material attributes. He demonstrates this blind spot using his own creative practice, critical review of academic literature, and careful unpicking of the historic pathways that this scholarship has taken – creating an exciting and innovative study that argues for the importance of materiality within comics analysis.”

The Materiality of Digital Comics by Ian Hague

Palgrave Studies in Comics and Graphic Novels, a series edited by Roger Sabin, Professor of Popular Culture at the University of the Arts London, concerns Comics Studies – with a capital “c” and a capital “s.”. From emerging as a fringe interest within Literature and Media/Cultural Studies departments, to becoming a minor field, to maturing into the fastest growing field in the Humanities, to becoming a nascent discipline, the journey has been a hard but spectacular one. “Those capital letters have been earned,” says Roger.

Recent releases in the series include Comics is…: Debating the Subject of Comics Studies edited by Martin Lund and The Materiality of Digital Comics by Ian Hague, Associate Dean of Research and Reader in Graphic Narrative at London College of Communication, University of the Arts London. His work sits at the intersection of comics studies, sensory and material cultures, and design, with a sustained interest in how graphic narratives are experienced, performed, and situated in the world.

• Reading Comics Through The Body – Embodiment and Materiality in the Making and Reading of Comics is available to registered academics from Springer Nature | ISBN 978-3032068736 | AmazonUK Affiliate Link |

• Dr Gareth Brookes is online at gbrookes.com

• More about the Palgrave Studies in Comics and Graphic Novels series

About the Author
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John Freeman

John is the founder of downthetubes, launched in 1998. He is a comics and magazine editor, writer, and Press Officer for the Lakes International Comic Art Festival. He also runs Crucible Comic Press.

Working in British comics publishing since the 1980s, his credits include editor of titles such as Doctor Who Magazine and Overkill for Marvel UK, Babylon 5 Magazine, Star Trek Magazine, and its successor, Star Trek Explorer, and more. He also edited the comics anthology STRIP Magazine and edited several audio comics for ROK Comics; and has edited several comic collections and graphic novels, including volumes of “Charley’s War” and “Dan Dare”, and Hancock: The Lad Himself, by Stephen Walsh and Keith Page.

He’s the writer of comics such as Pilgrim: Secrets and Lies for B7 Comics; “Crucible”, a creator-owned project with 2000AD artist Smuzz; and “Death Duty” and “Skow Dogs”, with Dave Hailwood.