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Quiet

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by Fernando Gabriel Sosa   Quiet (2026), written by former mental health nurse, celebrated baker, and author Kim-Joy, and illustrated by Alti Firmansyah, represents a sophisticated expansion of the narrative and therapeutic concerns introduced in Turtle Bread. Shifting the focus from adult community workshops to the high-pressure environment of a near-future secondary school in Manchester (set in 2060), the graphic novel tackles the complex reality of selective mutism, peer harassment, and the double-edged sword of technological interventions in adolescent mental health care. Through a compelling mix of speculative fiction, coming-of-age drama, and graphic medicine, the authors offer a nuanced examination… Read More

The Truth About Stacey

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Special guest review by Kerri Sparling of the diabetes blog sixuntilme.com. Stacey McGill had diabetes and – holy islets – she was cool. She was one of the lead characters in Ann M. Martin’s The Baby-Sitters Club series, acting as treasurer of the club.  You can go deep in this wiki, where Stacey is described as having “a very sophisticated style, which comes from having lived in New York. She loves wearing flashy clothes and jewelry and doing different things with her hair, which she keeps looking fabulous.”  FABULOUS!  Some of Stacey’s likes are cited:  “babysitting, math, money, shopping, pigs, Mary Poppins,… Read More

Graphic Medicine at ASBH

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The theme of this year’s annual meeting of the American Society of Bioethics and Humanities was “Tradition, Innovation, and Moral Courage.” The meeting was held October 24-27 in Atlanta, GA. (Photos by Michael Green.) From the abstract for the panel “Graphic Medicine @ Work: Outcomes When the Intervention is a Comic” : The last several years have seen a rise in graphic novels depicting medical experiences and graphic stories used for patient education purposes. A handful of preliminary studies suggest that the use of illustrations on health instructions increase patient engagement with and recollection of the information presented. Three studies further… Read More

Not Your Mother’s Meatloaf Interview

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Soft Skull press has just released Not Your Mother’s Meatloaf: A Sex Education Comic Book edited by Saiya Miller and Liza Bley.   Saiya presented her work on Meatloaf at Graphic Medicine conferences in Chicago and Toronto. I asked her to answer a few questions about this unique collection bursting with diverse and empowering words and images. (Full disclosure, I have a comic in the book!)   MK: Tell us how this book came about, and in the process, describe for us what this book is.  The book started as a project at Eugene Lang College while Liza Bley and… Read More

Sugar Baby

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Guest review by Hannah Marie Williams, student in the “Comics Narratives: Illness, Disability, & Recovery” course, Art Therapy Program,  School of the Art Institute of Chicago. “Sugar Baby,” by Nomi Kane, is a personal narrative comic about her experience getting diagnosed with diabetes, and a series of childhood experiences after. What I really appreciated about this particular story was the stories that did not have to do with disability directly, like the section “Zewish,” and the over-arching narrative of her wanting a dog. Too often in disability narratives, I feel as if the parts of the subject’s life that don’t deal… Read More