The Michigan State University (MSU) Comics Forum returns for it’s 2027 triennial event on the last weekend of February 2027 in-person at the MSU Main Library. All events associated with the MSU Comics Forum are free and open to the public. This year we welcome two esteemed keynote speakers:
Our 2027 Creator Keynote Speaker is Jen Wang, the award-winning New York Times bestselling author and illustrator of several graphic novels for young readers including Ash’s Cabin, Stargazing, The Prince and The Dressmaker, In Real Life (co-written with Cory Doctorow), and Koko Be Good. She is also a co-founder and organizer for Comic Arts LA and illustrated the 2027 MSU Comics Forum event artwork. She lives in Los Angeles.
Our 2027 Scholar Keynote Speaker, Margaret Galvan, is Associate Professor of visual rhetoric in the Department of English at the University of Florida. In her research, she examines how visual culture operates within the print media of feminist and queer social movements of the 1970s-1990s, recovering artists and their networks. Her award-winning first book, In Visible Archives: Queer and Feminist Visual Culture in the 1980s (2023, University of Minnesota Press) explores how publishing practices and archives have shaped understandings of the visual within feminist and queer activism. Her second book project, Comics in Movement, examines how LGBTQ cartoonists built community to support their comics in the 1980s and 1990s, formulating networks that still provide support today amidst a now booming publishing landscape.
We will also feature an artist alley with dozens of creators showcasing their work, panel discussions with a wide range of scholars discussing their research in comics, and an exhibition highlighting selections from the Michigan State University Special Collections Library (the largest public collection of comic books in the world).
We look forward to seeing you at our 16th MSU Comics Forum in February 2027!
Sincerely,
Ryan Claytor
MSU Comics Forum – Director