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My Trip with Drip

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by Kristina Bowers Josephine Mark’s graphic novel My Trip with Drip tells the story of a shy, determined bunny and a gruff, lone wolf who embark on a journey through the forest to escape a vengeful hunter and, along the way, discover what it means to care and be cared for. Originally published (2022) in the author’s native German, and later translated to English, My Trip with Drip has been recognized for its excellence in German children’s literature, winning the Max and Moritz Award for Best Comic for Children award in 2022. Mark’s cinematic framing and visual gags add as… Read More

Medical Mentions Book Reviews XIX – Comic Strip Edition #3

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Medical Mentions are a group of graphic works. The graphic works reviewed here are books whose primary topics are not medical, and 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… Read More

Best Breasts in the West

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By Maria Fitzgerald   Each chapter of this medical related memoir shows a different vignette from Trishelle Jeffery’s life. Many chapters concern a fibroadenoma in Jeffery’s breast. The book opens on Jeffery discovering a lump in her breast. As different incidents in Jeffery’s life unfold, we see that she is a student in college, and that she has a job as a nude model for life drawing classes. In one chapter we learn about how Jeffery allowed a sculptor to apply insulation foam on her torso as he tried to make a mold, for a cast of her.  She is… Read More

Down to the Bone – a leukemia story

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By PF Anderson   After I finished reading Down to the Bone, I poured out my feelings in the following short reaction comic on Instagram. The background images and artwork are all from the book and are Catherine’s artwork, to which I added words and layout to express myself. You might think of this as a Tiktok or Instagram reaction reel, but formatted as a comic reacting to another comic. Catherine’s images represented here: Image 1 (Panel 2: cover; panel 3: 131) Image 2 (Panel 1: 131; panel 2: pg. 50 – 51; panel 3: 60; panel 4: 63) Image 3… Read More

This Might Surprise You – A Breast Cancer Story

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by Janet Chan Hayley Gullen’s This Might Surprise You details her journey being diagnosed with early onset HER2 positive breast cancer. She starts with finding her breast lump and takes us through her experience being diagnosed and enduring multiple treatments. Breast cancer is one of the most diagnosed cancers in women globally with an estimated 2.3 million women diagnosed in 2022 (WHO, 2025). Early onset breast cancer is when breast cancer is diagnosed before age 50 and its incidence is on the rise (Brown, n.d.). HER2 positive breast cancer is a quickly growing cancer that accounts for about 20% of… Read More

Medical Mentions Book Reviews XIV — Genre Fiction Edition

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Book Reviews by Matt Peters   Medical Mentions are a group of graphic works. The graphic works reviewed here are books whose primary topics are not medical, and 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… Read More

Okchundang Candy

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by Kevin Wolf   Okchundang Candy by South Korean author Jung-soon Go (translated by Aerin Park) is a very gentle story of the authors’ remembrances of her grandparents (Mr. Go Jadong and Ms. Kim Soonim). Their medical concerns (lung cancer for her grandfather and dementia for her grandmother) are not as important as their loving relationship through Jung-soon’s eyes and colored pencil drawings that move from her childhood to adulthood renditions. Her grandparents were Korean War orphans with three children and their eldest son, Go Sangkwon, being the author’s father. This is a children’s picture book. You won’t learn anything… Read More

Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands

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by Matt Peters   Content advisory: sexual harassment, sexual assault, mass mortality events   For Canadian writer and artist Kate Beaton, two things weighed heavily on her mind immediately after college. The first was the unsettling financial implications of her student loan debt. The second was the limited job opportunities that an art degree offered in the Atlantic provinces, where she had grown up and attended college. With few other choices, Beaton decided to head west to Alberta, hoping to find high-paying work in the petroleum industry—work that could help her get a head start on her debt. Beaton recounts… Read More

Trouble Down South

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by Matt Peters   In 2021, Andrew Oh’s life took a detour. He woke up feeling a strange soreness in his groin, a pain that had no apparent cause. As the sensation persisted over the next few days, he couldn’t take his mind off the possibility that he was suffering from a hernia, a testicular torsion, or cancer. With growing anxiety, he decided to seek medical attention. But seeing a doctor neither confirmed his worst fears nor erased them. Along for his medical journey were readers of Oh’s weekly webcomic, Day and Age. Oh had been writing and illustrating the… Read More