Revista Lusófona de Estudos Culturais / Lusophone Journal of Cultural Studies, Vol. 10, No. 2, 2023, pp. 7–17 https://doi.org/10.21814/rlec.5397 Introductory Note: Wonder Comics. Redrawing Gender in Ibero-American Graphic Narratives Nota Introdutória: BD Maravilha. Redefinindo o Género nas Narrativas Gráficas Ibero-Americanas Nicoletta Mandolini Centro de Estudos de Comunicao e Sociedade, Instituto de Ciências Sociais, Universidade do Minho, Braga, Portugal Cristina Álvares Centro de Estudos Humanísticos da Universidade do Minho, Escola de Letras, Artes e Ciências Humanas, Universidade do Minho, Braga, Portugal María Márquez López Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Madrid, Spain Comics and graphic novels — or graphic narratives, as some prefer to call them (Chute & DeKoven, 2006) — are a growingly successful medium worldwide, both in popularity and critical recognition. In recent years, the emergence and spreading of the graphic novel, a format that is generally associated with “longer-length and adult-themed comics” (Baetens & Frey, 2015, p. 1) and with distribution channels (namely, bookshops) previously precluded the medium, allowed graphic narratives to enjoy a new renaissance in many areas of the globe. It also worked as a laissez-passer for comics to be recognised in areas of scholarly research that have traditionally proved reluctant towards the ninth art, such as that of literary studies. Moreover, the advent of what Manuel Castells (2004) has labelled “network society” to identify the constantly expanding influence that infor- mation technology and communication have in our daily lives has significantly widened graphic narratives’ spectrum of reception, and it continues to play a pivotal role in re- shaping comics’ affordances. Digital, internet and social media comics are, nowadays, a reality whose complex dynamics have been studied within a flourishing sub-field of research (Busi-Rizzi, 2023; Busi-Rizzi et al., 2023; Wilde, 2015) that is rapidly overcoming its disciplinary boundaries by gradually finding space and appreciation in other, broader, areas, such as those of cultural studies and communication sciences. Both the graphic novel format and the digital comics phenomenon have signifi- cantly impacted the visibility assigned to gender non-hegemonic authors and the repre- sentation of gender-related issues. The graphic novel is a format that, as scholars have pointed out (Baetens & Frey 2015, pp. 10–13), provides a privileged platform for non- fictional narratives and, among these, for life stories such as graphic memoirs, graphic biographies and graphic diaries/journals. Being life narratives such as autobiographies and biographies a creative practice that women writers and other marginalised subjec- tivities have historically re-worked and re-appropriated (Kadar, 1992, p. 5; Henke, 1998; Cooke, 2020, pp. 7–8), it is not surprising that many outstanding authors experimenting with the graphic novel are women and queer artists. In this sense, it is enough to think of