When we think academia, the comic book and comic form is usually overlooked as a piece of valuable literary scholarship. Comics are often presumed as not academic or critical enough to be a valid source of literary study, and if they are to be taken seriously only a certain kind of tragic, memoir style are considered worth analyzing. By arguing that ‘bad art’, ‘ugly comics’, or ‘juvenile fiction’ are necessary fragments of history to navigate the quickly developing world around us, MJ Chiao advocates for the comics form as a radical form of activism and social remembering. Ugly comics becomes survival. MJ Chiao is a fourth year English Literature student who is passionate about comics and graphic forms. With a love for teaching and writing, MJ wishes to challenge the status quo of English studies and academia to encompass the new medias and technologies of our everyday. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx