Blog

The world NEEDS HUMOR in these troubled times. Humor can lift the burden of worry, if even for a moment. Covid and quarantine have embedded themselves into my subconscious, and my work. I’m Bill Harvey –  Age 65.  Born and raised in the suburbs of Detroit.  I discovered superhero comic books at age six, and was hooked.  I wanted to draw them, write them, tell stories of heroes and villains, of drama, conflict, and romance.  Wanting to make comics didn’t make it so.  After decades of rejection letters from industry leaders, I was left with only scarred ambition and a sense of… Read More

Comics As Therapy and Healing In 2017, before I released Couldn’t Afford Therapy, So I Made This,  I did a short comic simply titled ‘Mental Health” and a mini comic (as in size it was about 4x3in) called ‘My Mental Health Does Not Determine My Success’. In both of those comics I talked about having bipolar and PTSD and about how I was afraid for people to know because they would call me crazy. At the end of 2017, I released an early version of Couldn’t Afford Therapy, So I Made This, and debuted it at Short Run Seattle. It… Read More

“Self Care in an Uncaring World,” or Tips on Thriving The Apocalypse is a free interactive comic encouraging self care during difficult times. This comic was to be part of my workshop at the Graphic Medicine 2020 conference in Toronto, but for obvious reasons, that doesn’t work. So I’m happy to have the chance to share it here.   Originally conceived after a certain current administration began a policy of detaining children at the border, it became difficult to manage my own well-being when so many people who were suffering. I know many people, including myself, felt helpless and overwhelmed. I… Read More

Mapping the Use of Comics in Health Education: A Scoping Review of the Graphic Medicine Literature Matthew N. Noe, MSLS ; Leonard L. Levin, MS LIS, MA, AHIP Special thanks to Suzana Makowski, MD, MMM, CPE This project was made possible with a Mapping the Landscape, Journeying Together grant from the Arnold P. Gold Foundation Research Institute. As many of you will remember, since Fall 2016, I have been discussing a scoping review project on the use of comics in education – a project that emerged out of the receipt of a Gold Foundation Mapping the Landscape Grant. In short,… Read More

I am Raghavi R. K., Assistant Professor of English in the Department of Languages at VIT-AP University, India. I often doodle as a pastime and draw short comics as a creative means to make sense of the world around me. Somehow seeing things mapped out on a paper enables me to process information in a better way. During the recent nation-wide lockdown, I started drawing to keep myself occupied, but on April 2nd, 2020, everything changed drastically for it was the first day I heard reports about violence against doctors and other frontline healthcare workers who were struggling to reduce… Read More

To respond to the cancellation of our 2020 Graphic Medicine conference in Toronto, to combat the social isolation of pandemic-related lockdowns, and to support and promote community, the Graphic Medicine International Cooperative (GMIC) launched a free weekly virtual meet-up called “Drawing Together” on April 6. We provided a Zoom link, a topic, and a group facilitator. Members of the world-wide Graphic Medicine community gathered to draw, support one another, and share. To learn more about previous Drawing Together sessions, check out our archive. We will now be offering our Drawing Together sessions monthly. More specifically, sessions will be the last… Read More

The Network of National Libraries of Medicine Northeast Region Grant Awarded for Digital Graphic Medicine Library Collection at MCPHS The Network of National Libraries of Medicine Northeast Region (NNLM NER) has awarded Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences a $7000 grant to acquire and determined best practices in collecting digital Graphic Medicine content for libraries. The one-year pilot program, “Digital Graphic Medicine Catalog: Comics and Graphic Novels Electronically Available for Healthcare,” expands on the University’s preexisting special collection, allowing it to address remote access to texts whose physical copies may either be limited or inaccessible, particularly during the COVID-19… Read More

In case you were unable to join us for our fourth Drawing Together event, here is a recap of the exercises we did together. Our host was Michael Green, GMIC board member, physician, bioethicist, and artist. We started the session with a fun warm-up exercise frequently used by Lynda Barry: Drawing with your eyes closed. Set a timer for one minute, hover your pen over your blank paper, close your eyes and don’t peek until the one-minute timer goes off. In one minute each: Draw a giraffe Draw a mermaid Draw Batman throwing up For extra fun, watch Michael do… Read More