Ad Astra Comix: The Panel is Political
Founded in 2013 by Nicole Marie Burton, Ad Astra Comix is run as a non-hierarchical collective.
We think comics are a great way to disseminate information. They can help amplify the voices of the unheard: women, racialized and/or colonized people, queer and trans people and others who experience structural oppression. That can be very discouraging reading, and we also think comics are an opportunity to tell stories of resistance, resilience and triumph.
What We Do
Publishing: Ad Astra Comix is committed to bringing a diversity of voices to life in the pages of comics. To this end, we publish comics with social justice themes. Our first full length graphic novel was ‘Drawing the Line: Indian Women Fight Back’, a North American edition of an already successful feminist comic.
Original work: Hugh and Nicole work as a writer-artist team to produce political and historical comics of their own. Check out our newspaper comic on Canadian politics, ‘Talk is Cheap.’ We also produced short comic on Inuit history, ‘Dogs’, available in poster format. For academics, activists and anyone else interested in hiring us, comics are a great way to get your message out there.
If you’re interested in being published or represent an artist looking for a publisher, don’t hesitate to get in touch. We are interested in republication and original work, as long as it has social justice themes. We take a broad view of what constitutes social justice, so don’t feel like it needs to be a comic book manifesto just to get published! We’ll consider anything that deals with the experiences of oppressed people or struggles of resistance.
Criticism: We love comics and we have opinions about them! One of the main features of our website is that we review comics with social justice themes, and occasionally video games too. Criticism tends to be focused on the social or political aspects of the work rather than the art. Interested in having a review published on our website? Drop us a line. Please note we currently can’t afford to pay reviewers, except in free comics.
Education: In the past, we’ve been involved in workshops and panels on topics ranging from making comics that advance social justice causes to using comics in the classroom. Interested in having us host a workshop? Check out our ‘Education’ page!
