Girlhood and Transmedia Practice in The Tea Dragon Society
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Abstract
In this article, I explore the significance of transmedia to contemporary independent comics through analyzing aspects of production, engagement, and content in a small-scale fantasy-based franchise, The Tea Dragon Society, that celebrates diversity and interconnectedness. This transmedia franchise centers predominantly on girl characters and is aimed mainly at 8–12-year-olds. The depiction of girlhood in the storyworld can be seen to be linked to how the overall franchise works and I argue that both can be seen as being in flux and potentially boundless, yet also bounded. The franchise also intertwines girlhood and craft cultures in the storyworld, modeling activity with which the creator hopes the target audience will engage in the real world and reflecting the franchise itself as it, too, represents crafting.
Contributor Notes
Mel Gibson is an Associate Professor in Childhood Studies at Northumbria University, UK. In addition to analyzing gender in historical and contemporary graphic novels and comics, she is also interested in the audiences for these media and how readers integrate them into their lives as shown in her 2015 monograph Remembered Reading: Memory, Comics and Post-War Constructions of British Girlhood published by University of Leuven Press.