Overview

In 2020, a group of academics were given the heady task of visiting as many comics and zine fairs in the country as possible with the aim of purchasing comics to be added to the National Library of Australia collection.

What they collected were works as varied as the people who made them. In this panel, researchers and academics Meg O'Shea, Dr Pat Grant and Gabriel Clark will discuss the collection of works purchased for the Library and share how the themes found in these works relate to their public-facing research project 'Folio: Stories of Australian Comics'.

Folio is an Australia Research Council-funded Linkage Project titled 'Contemporary Australian Comics 1980-2020: A New History' with additional financial support from the National Library of Australia and Creative Australia. The University of Melbourne, RMIT, and University of Technology Sydney managed the project. Folio opens up a new way of seeing Australia: a secret history drawn by its unique creators.