Comics, Culture, and Religion

This open access book offers a systematic overview of the relations between comics and religion from the perspective of cultural sociology. How do comics function in religions? How does religion appear in comics? How does the reading of comics relate to rituals, ethics, and worldviews? And how do graphic narratives inform us about contemporary society and the changing role of religion? Contributing authors, use examples from across the globe to explore a diversity of religions, spirituality and dispersed notions of the sacred – including Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Zoroastrianism, Indian and Japanese religions, Anthroposophy, Hinduism and Norse religion – but also the rituals, ethics, and worldviews that pop up in the comics milieu itself. In the burgeoning field of comics studies, research on the religious aspects from a sociological point of view is missing, a gap filled by the current contributors, making this volume as relevant to students of religion in popular culture, cultural sociologists and students of comics. The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license on www.bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by The Faculty for Humanities and Education and the University Library at the University of Agder, Norway.