5 Ways Comics Help Your Research Make a Bigger Impact

Mar 20

You’ve poured hundreds or even thousands of hours into your research project. Now, it’s time to bring it to the world. But the average paper only gets read and cited a handful of times. How can you build a bridge to a wider audience – so your findings really connect with the people who’ll be helped by them?

Whether you’re speaking to students, colleagues, policymakers, or a marginalized group, the core challenge is the same: crystallizing your findings in a way others can connect with. Research shows that visual media is the way. Comics can portray your work accurately while making it understandable, accessible, and actionable.

Here’s what the research shows about comics as a learning medium:

Comics Make a Positive Impact Across Age Groups and Study Levels

A 2016 study in Anatomical Sciences Education found that high school students and premedical students alike achieved higher quiz scores when educational comics were integrated into their plan of study, while even more experienced med students yielded better course grades when they engaged in close reading of the comics.

Comics Build Bridges of Understanding Between Disparate Lived Experiences

Readers “sympathize and empathize with comic book characters in unique ways,” due in part to the intimate work of filling in details between panels. The combination of text and images orchestrates new “opportunities for representation of experience often elided by verbal description.”

Comics Humanize and Concretize Abstract Ideas, Processes, and Conflicts

From civics to geopolitics, comics transform opaque institutions into approachable narratives. As readers step into a character’s shoes, they’re motivated to consider how complex issues impact them and those they care about. Nonfiction comics like Joe Sacco’s Palestine (1993) and Safe Area Goražde (2000) are a few examples.

Comics Increase Retention and Interest Among Non-Specialist Audiences

A 2011 study published in Life Sciences Education showed significant gains in both content knowledge and attitudes toward a specialized topic (in this case, sensory biology) from non-majors who read educational comics that dramatized and personalized it. Non-specialists respond to and remember comics.

Comics Can Clarify and Motivate Effective Action for Positive Change

Your audience is embedded in systems of meaning that give complex and contradictory clues about what would actually “make the world a better place.” The combination of greater knowledge retention, understanding, and empathy means comics can help your audience see your research as an actionable roadmap for change.

Our Comics Make Your Research as Exciting for Your Audience as It Is for You

Using a vibrant symbolic language that can engage any audience, comics make the particular universal. And you don’t need to be an artist yourself to harness the power of comics. We will partner with you to bring your vision to life, combining creativity with academic rigor. Most projects are complete within 60 days.

Sequential Potential Comics is the original and most trusted design house for academics and nonprofits who want to make a bigger difference by meeting their audience where they are. Our nationwide team includes multi-published professional artists and graduate-educated writers passionate about representing your work with the same care you do. We’ve worked with scholars from UC San Diego, Georgia Tech, and dozens more.

David Farrell