Ethics Untangled 50. What can comics such as Heartstopper teach us about ethics? With Simon Meisch
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Dec 1, 2025 
Simon Meisch, a Senior Lecturer in interdisciplinary ethics at the University of Tübingen, explores how comics can teach complex ethical issues. He highlights the effectiveness of serial narratives, like 'Heartstopper', in engaging diverse students. Meisch discusses how these stories address romantic identity and relationships, providing low-threshold entry points for ethical discussions. He emphasizes the importance of visual storytelling in fostering moral engagement and critically examines themes like consent and forgiveness while noting the need for deeper cultural analysis.
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Series Make Us Root For Moral Complexity
- Serial formats bend our moral intuitions by making us root for flawed characters across episodes.
- This creates productive tension between viewers' moral judgments and emotional investment.
Use Panels As Discussion Prompts
- Do use comic panels as visual prompts: display one strip and ask students to describe what they see and infer motives.
- Masking text or blacking out dialogue helps surface assumptions and moral intuitions for discussion.
Heartstopper's Origin And Core Plot
- Alice Oseman's Heartstopper began as an online comic and later became books and a Netflix series.
- The story follows Charlie and Nick at school as they fall in love and face mental health and family struggles.
