On the Visual Narratives of Ice in Popular Culture: Comics on Ice, Icy Villains and Ice Science

Popular culture – in the form of comic books and bande dessinées – is a versatile frame for interpreting our relationship with scientific and environmental discourses. While scientific data is often seen as the dominant expression of research, including research on ice, public understanding and engagement are embedded in a matrix of complex (cultural) processes that give ice meaning in our daily lives. Within this context, visual narratives play an important role in shaping our cultural ideas of ice. This chapter explores their many facets in ‘proto-comics’ of early-modern emblem books, the first modern comics, early twentieth-century sequential art fantasies and contemporary bande dessinées. Bringing together perspectives from science communication, comics studies and popular entertainment studies, this chapter focuses on contemporary examples of ‘comics on ice’ and comic book ice science villains to highlight how the intrinsically hybrid and changing nature of sequential art – and its ability to visually express non-visual emotions – can help us imagine the unimaginable (ecological futures) and define what might be called the ‘visual narratives of ice’.