ULTRASOUND

BY ISHANI ANWESHA JOSHI

Published by Fantagraphics and adapted into a feature film directed by Robert Schroeder, Ultrasound (2022) by Conor Stechschulte narrates the story of Glen and Cyndi, who are subjects in a neurological experiment manipulating their memories and perceptions. The text is structured into four distinct parts, each introduced by a quote that encapsulates the central philosophical concern of its respective segment. A work of fiction, the book is framed as a science fiction thriller that deals with medical themes such as mind control, human experimentation, gaslighting, and depression, among others. For scholars and practitioners of comic studies and graphic medicine, Ultrasound is particularly significant not only for its comic affordances, but also for its departure from the ‘lived experience’ aspect of graphic medicine toward a speculative engagement with ethically fraught medical experimentation that highlights the human consequences of unregulated research practices and invasive technologies.

Though the text is linear in structure, crucial information is withheld from readers, and the text gradually unfolds its full meaning in later sections. Ultrasound begins with Glen recounting a strange incident when a punctured tire leads him to the home of a seemingly married couple, Cyndi and Arthur.  Arthur proposes that Glen engage in sexual relations with Cyndi, but that encounter ultimately fails. The following morning, Glen leaves in distress, but is later contacted by Arthur, who claims Cyndi is pregnant, while Cyndi herself expresses unease about Arthur’s increasingly “weird” behavior (122, Tier 4, panel 1). The first two parts present events as Glen remembers them, but this apparent reality is disrupted in the third part, when both he and Cyndi are revealed to be subjects in an experiment. Attempts at escape, helped by researcher Shannon, prove futile as continued hallucinations indicate that psychological escape is impossible, even if it appears to be physically achieved. In the concluding frames, the contrast between the effects of the experiment on another subject, Katie, and the experimenters’ smiling faces indicates ethical indifference and continued experimentation. In adopting this narrative structure, Stechschulte employs a distinctly Lynchian twist, in which the ordinary slips into the macabre, grotesque, and surreal.

Fig 1: Ultrasound, pg. 152, panel 3-4.

The formal regularity of the highly ordered square and rectangular panels stands in stark contrast to the story’s narrative structure characterized by tonal shifts that change the way the reader has perceived information in the previous section(s). This narrative structure approximates the fracture of memory experienced by Glen, Cyndi, and Katie, thereby embedding the story’s thematic essence in its form.  Furthermore, Ultrasound’s color scheme is particularly significant. In the initial sections, blue represents the embedded narrative Glen recounts to his friend about a strange encounter, while red denotes the present-time conversation between Glen and his friend. However, at several moments, these colors bleed into one another, with red seeping into blue panels and vice versa, particularly on pg. 36, 67, and 70, where panels feature dual-colored outlines, thereby signaling transitions between conversational segments and narrated memory. The usage of color, therefore, emphasizes the story-within-a-story structure of Part 1 in a visually coherent and meaningful manner. The later sections expand the palette to include parrot green and cyan. Notably, pg. 51 to 63, which depicts a sexually explicit scene, appears to be produced using blue carbon paper, evident in their distinctive smudges and outlines, thereby visually distinguishing them from the rest of the book, while also thematically representing intimacy not as an idealized union of bodies but as an awkward, ongoing negotiation. The artist realistically depicts bodies, including Glen’s bald patch, Arthur’s pot belly, and Cyndi’s figure as it changes from adolescence to adulthood. However, in a mirror sequence at the beginning of Part 3, the body assumes a more critical narrative function. Katie, who the reader later learns is another victim of the experiment, on pg. 152–153 is changing clothes in front of a mirror, but her actual body (in cyan) does not match the body reflected in the mirror (in blue). The reflected figure appears as a distorted, fitter, and slimmer version, signifying Katie’s perception, a moment that initially confounds the reader but is later understood to be a result of the neurological experiment.

Although the reader is initially led to believe that Arthur is depressed and medicated, his entire identity as Cyndi’s husband is destabilized in the latter part of the book, and he is revealed to be part of the experimentation team, thereby casting doubt on all his earlier claims. Nevertheless, the way Arthur describes depression verbally in the text seems accurate. Arthur uses the word “black shroud” (pg. 30, Tier 3, panel 1) to describe depression and asserts that the condition “robbed” him of the favorite part of himself (pg. 27, Tier 5, panel 2).  He iterates, “When I’m depressed, it feels like all of my enjoyment of life is stored away somewhere” (pg. 20, Tier 3, panel 1), while also asserting, “I’m suddenly certain that the volume of joy in the world is finite. And my share’s been somehow taken” (pg. 19, Tier 1, panel 1-2).

Fig 2: Ultrasound, pg. 43, Tier 1-3

Following an extended conversation about his own depression, Arthur mobilizes this narrative to attribute the collapse of his non-existent marriage to his mental health, while simultaneously deploying it as a manipulative strategy to coerce Glen into engaging in intimacy with Cyndi.  Even in her experimentally altered state, Cyndi recognizes Arthur as a “persuasive arguer” (pg. 43, Tier 1, panel 1), pointedly reminding Glen, “Well, you’re in my bedroom, aren’t you?” (panel 2). She further reflects on the psychological hold Arthur maintains over her, noting that although he rendered their marriage miserable, he has nevertheless gaslit her into a sense of obligation: “I’m somehow convinced it’s my responsibility to uh- stick around until he can fix things” (Tier 2, panel 3 – Tier 3, panel 1). Although Cyndi recognizes the pattern of gaslighting at work, her self-identification as a “horrible person” (pg. 42, Tier 1, panel 1–2) reveals the extent to which she has unwittingly internalized its effects. These instances portray the abusive relational dynamic between Arthur and Cyndi.  Since Arthur himself is part of the experimentation team, the effects of his manipulation on both Cyndi and Glen can be considered part of the broader experiment. While the authenticity of Arthur’s claims of depression remains questionable, his pattern of manipulation and gaslighting is established early and repeats across Parts 1 and 2, significantly shaping both Glen and Cyndi’s actions as well as their mental states.

As subjects of a prolonged experiment, Glen and Cyndi are emblematic of the moral and ethical dilemma posed by human experimentation. As a result of the experiment, the subjects see, believe, and perceive reality as dictated by the experimenters. For instance, Glen perceives rain where there is none, while Cyndi alternately believes she is pregnant, seeing corresponding bodily changes, and then just as abruptly believes she is not. Cyndi also misidentifies Arthur as her high school teacher, indicating that the experiment has erased her memory of the teacher’s face and planted false information in her mind. Since the experiment alters and erases memory, Cyndi and Glen, as subjects, remember and forget different details of their previous encounters.  Glen and Cyndi become aware of this in Part 4 when they recall the same events differently. While Glen recalls meeting Arthur and Cyndi as depicted in Part 1, Cyndi remembers that she and Arthur tricked Glen into going to a hotel room, where Arthur altered Glen’s memory, causing him to forget what really happened, until she later helps him remember. By revealing that the events in Part 1 were actually fabricated memories planted in Glen’s mind, the artist helps the readers feel the disturbing impact of the neurological experiment, as what they believed to be true is suddenly proven false. The implications of such technology, capable of controlling the brain and thereby shaping an individual’s entire existence, are dire. If perfected, it could enable the selective manipulation and suppression of individuals and social groups, including racial and gender minorities, and, in contexts such as warfare, facilitate the large-scale exploitation of entire populations. Hence, Stechschulte’s Ultrasound is both a cautionary tale and a psychological horror story.

Ishani Anwesha Joshi is an Assistant Professor of English in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at Siksha ‘O’ Anusandhan University, Bhubaneswar, India. She received her Ph.D. from the National Institute of Technology Tiruchirappalli, India, and specializes in Graphic Medicine, Health Humanities, and Comic Studies. Her research articles have been published in various indexed journals. Published by Palgrave Macmillan, Joshi’s first book, Drawing the Pandemic: COVID-19 and Graphic Medicine (2026), offers a critical analysis of how COVID comics document the new normal and the sociopolitical structures of lived experience beyond mere biological pathology.