Guest Review by A. David Lewis In her book Comics and the Body: Drawing, Reading, and Vulnerability, Eszter Szép analyzes Joe Sacco’s The Fixer: A Story from Sarajevo in terms of haptic vision. Drawing on the work of Laura U. Marks, Szép explains haptic vision as the visible made tactile, “a mode of visual perception that is synesthetic in nature: It connects tactile and kinesthetic sensibilities with vision without the actual act of touch” (120). She describes the thickly cross-hatched backgrounds of The Fixer as “haptically charged” (121), causing the reader to pause and to experience Sacco’s own embodied… Read More
In Waves
Guest Review by Kiki Havos AJ Dungo’s 2019 debut graphic novel, In Waves, is a poetic tale of loss and love. The graphic novel has been awarded the 2020 American Library Association’s Alex Award and the 2020 Prix Des Libraries Du Quebec Comic category award. In Waves honours the mirroring of life and relationships—both past and present. With what had originally begun as an art school research project on surf history, Dungo expands to include a personal narrative of how the sport offered solace while grieving the death of his long-term girlfriend, Kristen. Dungo illustrates the evolution of losing… Read More
Dancing at the Pity Party: a dead mom graphic memoir
Guest Book Review by Lorraine Chun Throughout the world, people have suffered tremendous losses during the Covid-19 pandemic. The book, Dancing at the Pity Party by Tyler Feder, may be something that people could relate to, especially if they experienced a loss of a close family member. Tyler Feder’s memoir is a beautiful, heartfelt graphic novel dedicated to her mom, and aptly describes the “trappings of cancer” (covering the spectrum from hearing the initial diagnosis and prognosis, to treatment and chemo side effects) and finally, the family fallout after a loved one dies. Tyler, from her memoir, talks about her close relationship she had with her… Read More
IN.
Guest Review by Maura Spiegel The Edinburgh, Scotland-based New Yorker cartoonist, Will McPhail, is not the first to wonder what our psychic life would look like if we could draw it, but he does something quite special with the idea in IN. His narrator/protagonist, Nick Ross, is an artist who spends a lot of time in hipster coffee places and suffers from an inability to establish authentic connections with others; it all feels like performance to him. The witty portrayal of his muted black and white existence explodes into color when a superficial exchange with the plumber fixing his… Read More
‘Cancer Sells’ by Tat Effby
Tat is a cartoonist and illustrator, whose work has appeared in Private Eye, the Oldie, the Guardian and as Cath Tate Cards. She is a regular contributor to My Shrewsbury Magazine, home to her strip ‘Round the Bend’, based on the wildfowl on Shrewsbury’s stretch of the river Severn. Tat lives in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, with a husband and two sons (probably hers) who like to break things so she has something to do. Instagram & Twitter : @tat_effby www.tat-effby.com
Wink
Book review by Kevin Wolf First person fictional memoirs written in present tense have made me wonder. Am I, the reader, supposed to think that the protagonist is writing this memoir after the fact and recalling the events? Or that the character never writes this stuff down but lives the events and I’m virtually watching them as they happen? Or am “I” vicariously the memoirist living out this life? Or should I treat it like a non-fictional memoir in the present tense and I’m being given the gift of entry into the memoirist’s mind and life? And is… Read More
For Real, Issue One: The Oven
Review of For Real (Issue One): The Oven by James Romberger By Kevin Wolf Though I grew up reading comic books, I rarely read stand-alone comics today. I usually wait for a graphic novel to come out, which might be a multi-comic story arc. Comics are often sold as twenty or so page “pamphlets,” often with regular frequency. Some single stories in a single comic have achieved acclaim (e.g. The 8-page story Master Race by Al Feldstein writer and B. Krigstein artist in Impact issue 1, March 1955 EC Publications; about a holocaust survivor encountering a Nazi war criminal on… Read More
Living with Cancer: Our Stories – Kickstarter project.
From Catriona Laird: CHIP Collective’s first kickstarter project Living With Cancer: Our Stories is a comic anthology featuring 6 real stories from people affected by cancer in some way, whether that connection is a diagnosis of themselves or a loved one or being a medical expert in the field researching or treating the disease itself. Featured in the book also are 6 illustrations relating to either quotes from the stories or relating to CHIP Collective’s ideals. CHIP stands for Comics Help Inform People (highly inspired from the co-founders having burgers and chips at the time of creating the name) which… Read More
The Story Of My Tits
Review by Raghavi Ravi Kasthuri Originally published in the Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics. Published online: 03 Oct 2016. To cite this article: Raghavi Ravi Kasthuri (2016): The story of my tits, by Jennifer Hayden Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics, DOI: 10.1080/21504857.2016.1233900 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/21504857.2016.1233900 Published in the year 2015 following the critical acclaim of graphic onco-narratives such as Cancer Vixen: A True Story (2006) by Marisa Acocella Marchetto and David Small’ s Stitches: A Memoir (2009), Jennifer Hayden’ s The Story of My Tits which is located in the discourse of graphic medicine, is not just a… Read More
New Podcast: Elizabeth Hewitt & Ann Fox
In this week’s podcast, Elizabeth Hewitt from the Ohio State University presents “Incurable Time: The Graphic Temporalities of Autoimmune Disease.” Her talk was recorded at our 2015 Riverside Comics & Medicine conference. Also, I talk with Ann Fox of Davidson College about what she’s reading, as well as her new Graphic Medicine course. Keep your eyes on your screens as images will accompany the episode. This podcast is also available via iTunes. Support for this podcast comes from Penn State College of Medicine, Department of Humanities, the nation’s oldest Humanities Department within a medical school, pioneers of innovations in medical education… Read More
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- Next Page »