Medical Mentions are a group of graphic works. The graphic works reviewed here are works whose primary topics are not medical, yet they cover a medical topic with some depth at some point in the work. The rest of the work might be fictional or nonfictional, while the medical portion is often technical and five pages or more. The reviewer will usually neither recommend nor discourage reading the work, except when the rest of the work is deemed outstanding or terrible, respectively. Typically, six graphic works will be part of the review with one paragraph for each. Prior Medical Mentions can be found at I, II, III, IV, V, VI , VII, VIII, IX, X – Comic Strip Edition #1, XI, XII, XIII – Comic Strip Edition #2, XIV, XV, XVI, XVII, XVIII – Anti-stereotypes, and XIX – Comic Strip Edition #3. With that in mind, here’s Medical Mentions XX, focusing on works that contain narratives relevant to sexual and reproductive health.
Reviews by Matt Peters
The Amazing Spider-Man vs. The Prodigy! by Ann Robinson (writer), Ross Andru (artist), Mike Esposito (inker), Jan Cohen (colorist), and Joe Rosen (letterer); Marvel; 1976; comic book; 16 pages; author websites: See https://www.comics.org/series/19831/details/creators/ for brief biographies.
Marvel has used Spider-Man numerous times in comic-based public service announcements and other didactic fiction. Among the earliest such uses of the web-slinging superhero was a giveaway comic that Marvel produced for Planned Parenthood Federation of America. The Amazing Spider-Man vs. The Prodigy! is a slim, 16-page comic in which Spider-Man encounters a strange figure with a piercing stare and a large forehead. Known as The Prodigy, this strange figure is rounding up adolescents, putting them in a helicopter, and transporting them to a makeshift indoctrination camp. The Prodigy uses his indoctrination camp to feed the adolescents misinformation about teen pregnancy. He then takes his misinformation campaign to broadcast media, appearing on a local television program. With the help of some forced exposition, Spider-Man discovers that The Prodigy is an extraterrestrial in human disguise—one who wants to use human teens and their offspring as child laborers on his home planet. With its action-driven storytelling, The Amazing Spider-Man vs. The Prodigy! is light on information about teen pregnancy and pregnancy prevention. It is mostly focused on highlighting a handful of myths that The Prodigy peddles—for example, that sexual activity has to be frequent to lead to pregnancy. The story is largely a vehicle to get readers to look at the fact sheet printed on the final page, which briefly discusses menstrual cycles, same-sex attraction, and other topics related to sexual and reproductive health. Along with that fact sheet, the inside front and back covers refer readers to more information resources, including community organizations and other Planned Parenthood publications. Published in 1976, the comic is now a hard-to-find item. As such, it may not be a practical didactic tool today, but it may be of interest to collectors and historians of graphic medicine. The comic is one of the earliest sex-education comics. In that particular category, it is preceded only (to this reviewer’s knowledge) by Lucky Fights It Through, a 1949 comic about syphilis; Johnny Gets the Word, a 1965 comic about syphilis and gonorrhea; and Facts o’ Life Funnies, a 1972 comic about birth control, sexually transmitted infections, and other sexual and reproductive health topics.
Concrete Volume 7: The Human Dilemma by Paul Chadwick (writer, artist); ISBN: 9781593074623; Dark Horse Comics; April 2006; paperback and digital; 160 pages; author’s website: https://www.instagram.com/paulchadwickconcrete/.
Created by writer-artist Paul Chadwick, Concrete is a character who was once a regular guy named Ron Lithgow. His life was upended when extraterrestrials transferred his brain to another body, one with a stony exterior, a hulking frame, and a mix of biological and synthetic parts. Why those extraterrestrials swapped his body remains shrouded in mystery. What is certain, however, is that Concrete’s unique appearance has made him widely known, which is why a philanthropist named Walter Sageman wants to make Concrete the face of an ambitious—but controversial—campaign. Sageman wants to provide incentives to young, opposite-sex couples to undergo sterilization, an effort Sageman sees as critical to stemming the tide of population growth. Details are light, so it’s never made clear if the sterilizations will involve tubal ligations, vasectomies, or both. Whatever the case, Sageman recruits Concrete to be the spokesperson for the campaign—in part because Concrete is himself incapable of sexual reproduction because of his non-human body, making him uniquely qualified to speak about non-procreative lifestyles. Population control is a thorny topic to broach, one in which people’s most private decisions intersect with the world’s biggest questions about economic inequalities, colonial biopolitics, the resource demands of societies, and the limits of a planet facing environmental collapse. Writer-artist Chadwick handles the topic thoughtfully but leaves some threads unresolved and many questions unanswered. In the end, the story is mostly about the folly of having celebrity spokespeople broach such complex and emotionally charged topics on talk shows and other mass-media programs, where nuance is soon lost to name-calling, sloganeering, and other reductive rhetoric. As Concrete becomes the center of sensationalist news coverage, he grows increasingly weary of life in the public eye—and soon finds his concerns about his own mental health eclipsing his concerns about the planet’s health.
A Dangerous Woman: The Graphic Biography of Emma Goldman by Sharon Rudahl (writer, artist) and Paul Buhle (editor); ISBN: 9781595580641; The New Press; September 2007; paperback; 115 pages; author website: See https://womenincomics.fandom.com/wiki/Sharon_Rudahl for fan-made profile.
Content Advisory: Anti-Semitic violence, politically motivated violence
In A Dangerous Woman, writer-artist Sharon Rudahl takes readers through the momentous and controversial life of the anarchist and labor activist Emma Goldman (1869 – 1940). Rudahl recounts how Goldman’s political awakening was almost inevitable, having been born in a Jewish ghetto in Western Russia, where anti-Semitic violence and brutal living conditions were commonplace. Always strong-willed, Goldman made her way to St. Petersburg and later New York, each step of the way seeking more freedom and opportunity. As both proved elusive, she developed a growing interest in the transformative potential of leftist ideologies—first socialism and later anarchism. Rudahl keeps Goldman’s political life central to the narrative, focusing especially on Goldman’s public speaking, radical publishing, and occasional proximity to revolutionary violence. Intertwined, however, are narrative threads about Goldman’s work in healthcare, which began while serving a one-year sentence in New York’s Blackwell Island Penitentiary for inciting a riot. At the prison hospital, an amiable doctor recruited Goldman to be his nurse. She continued her nursing work after prison, caring primarily for indigent patients. Many were women whose lack of access to birth control left them physically depleted from the combination of frequent childbirth, constant childrearing, and difficulty affording basic needs. Goldman later traveled to Austria to pursue certificates in nursing and midwifery, thereby formalizing her training. While in Europe, she attended a conference in Paris focused on family planning and sustainable population growth. Back in the U.S., her nursing and activism converged in a campaign to distribute condoms and diaphragms, empowering women to have more control over their reproduction—and, in turn, their health and household finances. Rudahl has no small task in front of her as she distills these and other events into a graphic biography. While Rudahl succeeds at the feat, at times her narrative is filled with crowded panels where images, captions, and speech bubbles compete for space, spill out of their margins, and obscure gutters, creating confusing layouts for the reader. The effect may be intentional, capturing the often-chaotic life of a political radical who defied norms and laws with regularity. Whatever the case, the messy panels might not be to everyone’s taste, but they’re worth the trouble for anyone seeking a closer look at one of history’s most legendary firebrands.
Flow by Paula Sevenbergen (writer), Claudia Balboni (artist), Fabi Marques (colorist), and Jodie Troutman (letterer); ISBN: 9781545823651; Mad Cave Studios; March 2026; paperback and digital; 128 pages; author websites: https://www.paula7bergen.com/ for Sevenbergen, https://claudia_balboni.artstation.com/ for Balboni, https://www.instagram.com/porrafabi_/ for Marques, https://longtalljodie.com/ for Troutman.
Content Advisory: Bullying, period stigma, and animal cruelty
Dara Lund had everything against her at the onset of puberty. Her sheltered, home-schooled childhood left her without the sex education she needed to understand what was happening to her body. Worse still, Dara was subjected to an onslaught of cruel jokes when a bully named Conley Cutcher took advantage of her ignorance and gullibility. Conley convinced Dara that her period was a sign that she had been cursed—and to break that curse, Dara would need to participate in a set of dangerous and demeaning rituals, such as swallowing a live beetle and carrying around a freshly severed fish head. Although Dara is central to the plot of Flow, the story is told from the perspective of Moe Mendes, who was a bystander when Conley bullied Dara. That part of the story is told in retrospect. In the story’s present, Moe is a medical student who starts to experience a series of eerie events. Unsettled by those events, Moe suspects that Dara, years later, has cast a real curse on the people who watched in silence when Conley weaponized a fake curse. Telling the story from Moe’s perspective steals much of the emotional resonance that Dara’s abuse could have had. At the same time, it breezes past much of the character development that Dara needed, leaving the reader struggling to feel emotionally invested in a core character and core part of the story. In the book’s afterword, written in conventional prose, writer Paula Sevenbergen shares sobering commentary on the state of sex education in the U.S., which is often the target of prudish parents and culture-war politics. She describes how the shame and ignorance that often surrounds menstruation was what motivated her to write Flow. While Flow is a well-meaning response to that shame and ignorance, its message is largely lost in its unconvincing storytelling. Ultimately it spends most of its time setting up horror tropes and too little time incorporating didactic story elements that could serve as a meaningful corrective to the problem that motivated its writing in the first place. The creative decision to make Moe a medical student in her adult years could have been used as a hook for including those didactic elements. Instead, Sevenbergen adds a subplot about Moe’s romantic relationship with a mentor and includes some scenes of Moe conducting research in a medical microbiology lab.
Green Arrow (2001 – 2007 series) #44 by Judd Winick (writer), Phil Hester (penciler), Ande Parks (inker), Guy Major (colorist), and Clem Robins (letterer); UPC: 761941227153; DC Comics; January 2005; comic book (print and digital; see DC Universe Infinite and Kindle for digital editions); 24 pages; author websites: https://www.instagram.com/juddwinick/ for Winick, https://www.facebook.com/philhestercomics/ for Hester, https://andeparks-newoldfashioned.beehiiv.com/ for Parks, https://www.instagram.com/winemoose/ for Major, https://www.facebook.com/clem.robins/ for Robins.
Writer Judd Winick is well known in the graphic medicine community for his graphic memoir Pedro and Me: Friendship, Loss, and What I Learned. Published in 2001, the book focuses on Winick’s friendship with Pedro Zamora, an AIDS educator and activist who was HIV positive. Years later, Winick broached the topic of HIV/AIDS once again when he was writing the DC Comics series Green Arrow. The opening sequence of Green Arrow #44 shows a young woman named Mia Dearden meeting with an unnamed physician. Accompanying Mia is Green Arrow, at the moment going by Oliver Queen instead of his superhero alias. For complete newcomers to the series who aren’t well versed in the DC universe (like this reviewer), Winick and his creative team make it easy to surmise from context that Mia is a relatively new character, as well as someone Oliver has taken under his wing to join his crime-fighting efforts in some capacity. The focus of the sequence, however, is the revelation that Mia is HIV positive. Caught off guard by the revelation, Oliver asks a series of questions that helps drive the exposition, secondarily providing readers with essential real-world information about HIV/AIDS. Oliver asks Mia how she contracted HIV, to which she replies that when she was living on the streets (years prior to meeting Oliver), she engaged in sex work as a way to survive. The physician interjects that “H.I.V. is transferred through sex, transfusions and intravenous drug use” (page 2, panel 6). Oliver then asks for clarification as to whether Mia has HIV or AIDS, to which the physician replies that Mia’s T-cell count and antibody tests indicate that Mia’s infection has not developed into AIDS. Additional dialogue focuses on Mia’s treatment plan, which includes the combination drug therapy known as highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART). The remainder of the comic continues Mia’s story but splices it with more standard superhero fare, including a fight training sequence and a rooftop meeting of vigilantes to discuss a developing threat to the city below. With Mia’s story, Winick and his creative team prove themselves adept at handling serious subject matter within the superhero genre—and develop Mia into one of the genre’s most compelling supporting characters. (To date, Mia Dearden has never had her own comic book series or one-shot.)
World War 3 Illustrated: 1979-2014 by Peter Kuper and Seth Tobocman (editors); ISBN: 9781604869583; PM Press; May 2014; hardcover and digital; 320 pages; author websites: https://www.peterkuper.com/ for Kuper, https://www.facebook.com/seth.tobocman/ for Tobocman.
Content Advisory: Police and military violence, gender-based violence, HIV/AIDS stigma, medical racism, and exploitative research
World War 3 Illustrated is a comics anthology magazine that premiered in 1979. Within its pages, underground comix, zine culture, urban art, and left-wing politics converge to express discontent about various forms of social injustice, taking aim at issues such as gentrification, government corruption, mass incarceration, police brutality, militarism, and neo-colonialism. Along with comics, the magazine has often published poster-style art pieces and various word-and-text montages. Over the years, the magazine’s contributors have taken on numerous topics relevant to the social determinants of health, such as education, housing, and the environment, as well as some topics with direct relevance to health. The broad spectrum of the magazine’s subject matter was captured in a curated volume released by PM Press in 2014, World War 3 Illustrated: 1979-2014. Of the health-related works that made it into the volume, four are relevant to sexual health. In “One Nation Under Fear” (pages 37-39), Ryan Inzana (writer, artist) recounts his alienation from Christianity when he saw how members of his faith community responded to the AIDS epidemic. Blending incisive commentary and an expressive drawing style, he captures the profound dismay he felt when he witnessed the fear and hatred many Christians expressed toward people living with AIDS. In “K-9’s First Time, Part 2: ‘The Boyfriend’” (pages 61-66), K-9 (writer) and Fly-2K (artist) combine haunting words and imagery to tell a story about a preadolescent survivor of sexual violence, referred to as K. The black-and-white drawings turn surreal as K experiences the depersonalization of her trauma responses. In “Pink Medicine” (pages 156-162), Kevin C. Pyle (writer, artist) tells the history of the infamous Tuskegee Syphilis Study, which was undertaken between 1932 and 1972. In a series of captioned illustrations based on the documentary record of the study, Pyle recounts how researchers used deception and other unethical practices to inoculate Black patients with syphilis, a sexually transmitted disease that often has profound effects on the body, damaging a wide range of soft tissues, including nerves, blood vessels, and skin. In “The Quiet Occupation” (pages 250-255), Nicole Schulman (writer, artist) uses narration and scratchboard illustrations to explore how the U.S. military’s status of forces agreement (SOFA) with South Korea protects U.S. military personnel from prosecution in South Korean courts, effectively letting them commit numerous crimes with impunity. Common among those crimes are sexual assault, solicitation of involuntary sex workers, and other forms of gender-based violence. Unflinching in their messaging, these four pieces lend themselves well to a book that showcases the power of art and writing as forms of social protest.
Editor’s note: Awaiting review are two more books in the World War 3 series: The Right to Live in Peace (covering war trauma, Palestine-Israel war, PTSD, death, fascism, democracy, hope, empathy, mental health, public health) and My Body, Our Rights (covering abortion, self-determination, empowerment, bodily threats, power dynamics, public health, freedom, women’s rights).
Matt Peters is a program manager at Health Sciences Design, an interdisciplinary health innovation program at the University of Arizona Mel & Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health. He is also a longtime comic book reader and collector who can be found from time to time at his local comic book shops. Views expressed are his own.
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