It is with great pleasure that we present the eleventh issue of CLOSURE Kieler Journal for Comics Research. Attentive readers will have noticed that we have bid farewell to the small ›e‹ in ›e-Journal‹ in our title—after all, it's thematically perfect for this issue when even the journal name experiences a small ending. This special edition was originally planned for publication in 2024, which would have precisely marked our journal's tenth anniversary. Now we have passed this milestone and are delighted that we're still going strong! With the theme »The End is Here,« we have decided to create a counterpart to our 2017 issue on »Beginnings« in comics.

The idea of an endpoint in relation to comics may initially seem paradoxical. After all, the medium has experienced an astonishing renaissance in recent decades, both in its diversity and cultural significance. Nevertheless, there are numerous ruptures and transformations that have prompted us to examine the question of endpoints within the tradition of pictorial storytelling that has accompanied us since the 19th century.

Historical observation reveals several moments that could be interpreted as potential ›endpoints‹ in comics history—particularly the era of the Comics Code Authority in the 1950s, which drastically changed the industry. In more recent times, we have experienced another transformation, what Adrienne Resha (2020) calls the »blue age« of comics, driven by technological progress. The manner of creating, distributing, and consuming comics has radically changed. Do webcomics, digital platforms, and interactive media signify the end of the traditional comics world? Is the comic created by human authors and artists facing extinction due to AI-generated stories?

The phenomenon of endings naturally also plays an important role as a narrative element—every story must come to its (provisional) conclusion. This can serve as a harmonious resolution of conflicts or raise entirely new perspectives and questions, as shown by the final interaction between Batman and the Joker in Alan Moore's and Brian Bolland's iconic The Killing Joke (1988). Seriality itself, one of the formal pillars of the comics medium, appears to be a challenge to conclusion, as it typically aims for continuation rather than termination. How do series ultimately find their end?

Moreover, variations of endings—whether through the departure of characters or apocalyptic scenarios—can fundamentally determine storylines, as seen in Moore's and Gibbons' Watchmen (1986/87), which served as a critical swan song to superheroes and significantly contributed to the reassessment of comics in the mid-1980s. And last but not least (no pun intended!), the end of the world has enjoyed particular popularity in recent years, exemplified by Robert Kirkman's global phenomenon The Walking Dead (2003-), which prompted Kyle Bishop to speak of a »zombie renaissance« in 2009.

This issue now explores the diverse dimensions of the ›end‹ in comics. Our authors have approached these questions from various disciplinary angles—exploring endings as narrative devices, visual metaphors, cultural transitions, and conceptual frameworks—offering concrete insights into how comics represent and negotiate finality.

Alissa Burger examines conceptual ironies in »Afterlife with Archie«, a fragmentary horror series about the end of the world. The zombie apocalypse, arising from the fusion of supernatural forces and human cruelty, destroys the idyllic Riverdale and reveals the etymology of the term »apocalypse« as »revelation.« Burger shows how the collapse of familiar community structures forces the characters to recognize their true nature—a process of self-discovery through loss. The analysis demonstrates how comics can use apocalyptic narratives to reinterpret established characters and blur the boundaries between narrative ending and transformative continuation.

After the attack on Charlie Hebdo, the surviving artists Luz, Meurisse, and Coco find their own visual languages for trauma and their ›end experiences‹ in their autobiographical comics. While in Luz's minimalist color scheme, the intense red oscillates between life and death, Meurisse seeks her lost lightness in the colorful beauty of art. Coco's complex color system encodes her traumatic emotional states and shows how she struggles with the paralyzing blue of overwhelming feelings and the panicked red of mortal fear. In her contribution, Myriam Macé examines these unique color metaphors that make the seemingly unspeakable visible and create healing spaces of expression for the survivors of the end of an era.

In her contribution, Birte Svea Philippi examines the visual representation of dying and death in Barbara Vanistendael's graphic novel When David Lost His Voice. Using key images, such as the personified death as the Grim Reaper in a danse macabre with David's daughter, Philippi shows how comics as a medium uses its seemingly infinite formal inventory to depict finality. These individual visualizations, for instance through skeletons and skull drawings, demonstrate the potential of comics to concretize abstract concepts visually and illustrate how the end of a life paradoxically marks the beginning of the grieving process.

Lena Henningsen examines in her contribution the representation of death and the posthumous legacy of the Chinese author Lu Xun in Chinese lianhuanhua comics. Using examples from the late 1970s, she shows how these visual narratives stage the end of a life while simultaneously marking the beginning of a new cultural narrative. The analysis demonstrates how Lu Xun's death signified his physical end but simultaneously heralded the beginning of his posthumous fame—with the comics serving not only to propagate an official image but also creating subtle artistic spaces in which the author's ambiguity and modernism could live on. Our special thanks go to John Crespi from Colgate University for his external expert review and expertise on this essay.

With the monumental exhibition »La BD à tous les étages,« the Centre Pompidou in Paris celebrated the definitive breakthrough of comics into the art canon—but this elevation comes at a price. From the originally anonymous, anarchic production to the fetishization of the original and the artist figure, the medium itself transforms with musealization. Felix Keller viewed the exhibition for CLOSURE and reflects in our open section on whether the subversive potential of comics—its »anarchist other«—might be lost in the process of becoming art.

In our ComicKontext section, we bring an interview between Jaja publisher Anna Köhn and comic artist Jonas Fischer, on the occasion of the publication of the German edition of the comic Toxic. Working as a team with author Amelia Fiske, he tells a story from the region around Lago Agrio in the Amazon rainforest of Ecuador, where oil extraction by Texaco (now Chevron) was pushed forward in the 1960s without regard for the consequences.

For our cover, we thank NEUROLUS, illustrator and comic artist from Saarland.

We are grateful to all authors who made this anniversary issue possible, and to our readers who have supported CLOSURE over the past decade (plus one year). As we reflect on endings, we also celebrate new beginnings and continuities and look forward to continuing our journey in comics research.

Kiel, April  2025
Susanne Schwertfeger and Cord-Christian Casper for the CLOSURE team

Bibliography

• Bishop, Kyle: Dead Man Still Walking: Explaining the Zombie Renaissance. In: Journal of Popular Film and Television 37.1 (2009), pp.16 –25.
• CLOSURE #4 (2017), https://www.closure.uni-kiel.de/closure4/start
• Grünewald Dietrich: Das Prinzip Bildgeschichte. Struktur und Geschichte der Comics. In: Beiträge zur Comicforschung. Ed. Dietrich Grünewald. Bochum: Bachmann, 2010, pp. 11–31.
• Lent, John (Ed.): Pulp Demons: International Dimensions of the Postwar Anti-Comics Campaign. London: Associated University Presses, 1999.
• Palandt, Ralf (Ed.): Rechtsextremismus, Rassismus und Antisemitismus in Comics (Archiv der Jugendkulturen). Berlin: Hirnkost 2011.
• Resha, Adrienne: The Blue Age of Comic Books. In: Inks: The Journal of the Comics Studies Society 4.1 (2020), pp. 66–81.
• Stierle, Karlheinz / Warning, Rainer (Ed.): Das Ende. Figuren einer Denkform (Poetik und Hermeneutik 16). München: Fink 1996.