HCID’s Ernesto Priego and Linda Berube presented their latest research at the Comics Forum 2025: Industry, held at Leeds Art Gallery and Library on Thursday 13 November 2025.

In his paper Comic Books as Creative Industry: Comics and the PreDigital-Revolution, Ernesto discussed how mass-production technologies - from lithography and wood engraving to photomechanical reproduction - enabled the serialisation, dissemination and standardisation of visual storytelling. He argued that today’s shift toward generative AI and digital distribution echoes, and problematises, these earlier technological transitions in the medium. Ernesto highlighted Linda Berube’s (2025) use of rapid ethnography research‑ on how artists and readers navigate these shifts, emphasising the need to understand comics as part of a broader creative industry, shaped by technology and policy.

In her paper ‘The All-Seeing Eye’: Digital Comics Creators and Agency within the Platform-Based Ecosystem, Linda shared empirical findings from her HCID/British Library doctoral research, focusing on the evolving role of digital comics creators. Her research demonstrated the often contradictory appearance of the relationship between comics creators and platforms: while creators have some autonomy, they are often restricted by platforms in a ‘bounded agency’, sometimes giving away rights and royalties. She examined how creators work within their own personalised creative ecosystems and explained how creator and ecosystem operate in a symbiotic relationship with broader platform-based digital and digital-comics ecosystems.

Both papers prompted thoughtful questions and received positive feedback from colleagues in the audience.

Ernesto also participated in the panel event to launch the academic book Graphic Refuge. Visuality and Mobility in Refugee Comics (2025), by Dr Dominic Davies (City St George’s) and Dr Candida Rifkind (University of Winnipeg), held in the Clerkenwell campus. Ernesto discussed the book’s multidisciplinary contributions, emphasising how the authors engage with the haptic, immersive and interactive qualities of digital comics on the refugee experience. Dr Mihaela Precup (University of Bucharest) also contributed a response. The hybrid event brought together academic and creative perspectives on themes like displacement, migration and asylum in graphic narrative form. Moderated by Reed Puc (City St George’s and the British Library) and hosted by Dr Carolina Matos (City St George’s), the session invited engagement and questions from the audience. Ernesto’s involvement underlined his engagement with interactive visual storytelling and the intersections of digital comics, materiality and cultural representation. This event is a result of previous and ongoing research collaboration between the Department of Media, Culture and Creative Industries and the HCID.