Violence Against Women in Graphic Novels: Illustrating Resilience

An examination of how comics represent, confront, and sometimes perpetuate gendered violence.

Lee Okan argues that comics, with their hybrid form of image and text, possess an ability to express the unspeakable dimensions of trauma while also raising ethical questions about spectatorship, representation, and storytelling. Through close analysis of contemporary and independent comics, as well as anthology collections, this book shows how artists navigate the tension between testimony and spectacle, visibility and exploitation.

Rather than treating comics as an isolated medium, Okan situates these works within broader cultural and media discourses on sexual violence, arguing that comics shape and are shaped by feminist activism, visual culture, and reader response. Sexual Violence in Comics traces how creators reframe the terms of witness, challenge dominant narratives, and reclaim narrative authority, particularly in the wake of the #MeToo movement and beyond.

Lee Okan is Professor of literature and writing at Bunker Hill Community College in Boston.