From Newsarama, a Call For Papers: “Ever-Ending Battle” - Special Symposium on Heroism & Mortality in Comics for Spring 2006 International Journal of Comic Art issue.

The International Journal of Comic Art (IJOCA) is pleased to welcome submissions for the upcoming symposium in its Spring 2006 edition 6.1. The wide focus of the symposium, entitled “The Ever-Ending Battle,” will be on issues of mortality in comics, particularly, but not exclusively, the relationship between death and heroism.

Do media such as comic books, comic strips, editorial cartoons, or graphic novels treat death, mourning, bereavement, or even resurrection/rebirth differently from other forms? What are superheroes’ relationship to death? How do satirists address the passing of a major real-life figure? What happens when a comic strip creator dies, yet his/her work lives on? Are heroes allowed to mourn (and what allows them to be so often resurrected)? Topics abound – From Superman to little orphan Annie to the late Hershfeld to cartoons of Arafat to the rebirth of Green Lantern…and beyond! Papers utilizing the thanatological works of Ernest Becker or Elizabeth Kubler-Ross are especially encouraged.

Submissions are asked to be approximately 5,000 words and delivered in Windows-based Microsoft Word, Word Perfect, or rtf formats, either on a computer diskette by postal mail or as an attached file by November 26, 2005 to:

A. David Lewis
IJOCA Ever-Ending Battle Symposium
15 Glenville Avenue #5
Allston, MA 02134

Writers will be notified by December 7 and should be prepared to quickly perform final edits for IJOCA’s December 15 deadline. All potential images to be included with the article should be scanned at 300 dpi, converted to black and white JPG format, and submitted with the original November file. Please remember to include full contact information with each submission.

(via Gravity Lens)