The 1976 Project: On Comics and Grief, or How Our Lives Intersect with What We Study

ABSTRACT:“The 1976 Project: On Comics and Grief, or How Our Lives Intersect with What We Study” describes a project that focuses on a year in comic book publishing and the personal grief that suffused my undertaking of this project. The essay moves back and forth between creative nonfiction and comics studies in a hybrid and fragmented style that embraces both academic and personal connections. I use scenes of creative nonfiction to tell the story of my mother’s death, the way the 1976 Project evolved, and my growing realization that this project was at least partially wrapped up with my grief at my mother’s death. Interposed between these snapshots are theories of nostalgia and grief, as well as theoretical ideas from comics studies. The essay also establishes how and why examining a single year in comics publishing—as I have done in reading all comic books published and distributed on newsstands in 1976—is a novel and valuable framework, both as a way of confronting grief and as an approach to comics studies.