An anthropological comic was written, illustrated, designed and published by students of Prof. Papailias’ Fall 2022-23 course “Anthropology and Comics.” This course introduced students to comics as a distinct visual medium, cultivated visual literacy and studied graphic novels with social and cultural thematics as “ethnographies.” The final project was to create a proposal for an anthropological comic along with a story board and first pages. In the second semester, after the end of the course, a group of students from the course took the initiative to complete the comic for publication. Students developed the scenario, illustrated and did the layout for an anthropological comic about inflation in Greek society, entitled 10 lepta (lit. ten minutes, but also ten cents). The comic is set in a supermarket and the characters are bank notes (including the ‘drachma’ which was phased out with the Euro). The title refers to how little time it takes to spend a whole salary given the rise in prices.

The comic was printed in May, 2023. The student creators presented the comic and led a workshop at the LA Comics Festival, in the nearby city of Larissa, on May 28, 2023.

In the workshop, entitled Anthroκόμιξ, the students shared their thoughts on the potential of comics as a method of storytelling about collective experiences and social relations. They discussed a range of issues, such as multimodality, humor, the blurred lines between reality and fiction, the public’s engagement and the connection between ethnographic self-reflexivity and autobiography in the comic genre. In the workshop, interactive exercises and games were included introducing participants to the ways that comics can be a communicative and narrative apparatus in the social sciences and humanities.