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Ghosts

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Review by Kevin Wolf Ghosts is another wonderful all-ages graphic narrative by Raina Telgemeier, whose earlier award-winning works included the autobiographical Smile and Sisters. Ghosts is the story of a family moving to a new home in a fictional northern California town (Bahía de La Luna; Moon Bay in English) whose air is supposed to be better for the youngest daughter (Maya) who has cystic fibrosis. Cystic Fibrosis is a degenerative genetic disease that causes mucus to build up in the lungs making breathing difficult. Graphic Medicine community member (and 2016 conference organizer) Andrew Godfrey reports that current median life expectancy… Read More

Billy, Me & You: A Memoir of Grief and Recovery

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Guest review by Dr. Sathyaraj Venkatesan and Anu Mary Peter, National Institute of Technology, India. Review Published in 2011 by Myriad Editions, Billy, Me & You: A Memoir of Grief and Recovery (hereafter Billy, Me & You) is a graphic memoir by Nicola Streeten, an illustrator and academic. Serialized initially in Liquorice magazine, Billy, Me & You was later collected into a graphic novel thirteen years after the death of Billy, author’s first child who died after cardiac surgery at the age of two. Suffused with subtle humor, if the memoir chronicles the complexities of human grief and bereavement it also deftly records the emotional… Read More

Lisa’s Story: The Other Shoe

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Guest review by Sathyaraj Venkatesan and Raghavi Ravi Kasthuri, National Institute of Technology, India. Published in 2007, Lisa’s Story: The Other Shoe by Tom Batuik is a compilation of comic strips about the breast cancer experience of Lisa Moore, a popular fictional character in the Funky Winkerbean series. Syndicated in more than four hundred newspapers, the Funky Winkerbean series is celebrated for illuminating socially relevant issues such as teenage pregnancy, alcoholism, gun violence, suicide, among others. Lisa’s Story: The Other Shoe is no exception in that Batuik, through a series of two tier black and white cartoons, meditates upon the diagnosis,… Read More

Don’t Go Where I Can’t Follow

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An Intrusion of Illness: A Story of Young Mourning Review by Alycia Best. Don’t Go Where I Can’t Follow takes its readers through the light-hearted joy of a relationship—the comical and touching moments of two young people’s many adventures together—and, eventually, the emotional trauma that accompanies losing a loved one to a crippling illness. The novel manifests itself in varying modes of illustration, through hand-drawn cartoon images and realistic depictions, photographs, scanned copies of actual letters and postcards, and diagrams. This is the record of Anders and Cheryl, a couple who is forced apart by the suffocating grips of cancer,… Read More

Walking the Dog

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awaiting GM review. Amazon blurb: ‘Approaching fifty, and warned by his doctor that he’s drinking too much and needs to take more exercise, David Hughes is given a dog for his birthday – Dexter, a wire-haired fox terrier. Hughes’ daily walks with Dexter form the spine of Walking the Dog. We eavesdrop on their encounters with fellow dog-walkers (‘Hello Hector’, ‘Hello Chester’…) and on Hughes’ thoughts as he plods along carrying a plastic bag of poo. He begins to remember moments from his past, dark memories of murder and violence. He explores his own fantasies and obsessions. From the gentle comedy… Read More

When David Lost His Voice

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not reviewed by GM.org yet. Self Made Hero blurb: “A heartfelt portrayal of a family preparing for life after David” The moment his granddaughter Louise is born, David learns that he has cancer. But words were never his forte, and he’d rather keep quiet about his illness, the pain and the end that awaits him – much to the frustration of the women in his life. They wait, powerless, for the silent but inexorable end. “This is an amazing book, one of the best published by SelfMadeHero so far.” Rachel Cooke – The Observer

Seeds

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Ross Mackintosh’s book Seeds (2011) describes the final couple months of his father’s life. His fun loving, pub going, sport loving but quietly philosophical ‘Dad’ died of disseminated prostate cancer in 2010 and Mackintosh, who had previously experimented with comic strips, felt inspired to embark on a full length narrative work. He states in the introduction how lucky he feels to live in the UK during a period of time in which healthcare is provided by the National Health Service (NHS). In contrast to nearly all the US graphic novels about cancer, in which significant themes seem to be the… Read More

Vertigo Verite: 7 Miles a Second

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‘ I can’t abstract my own dying any longer. I am a stranger to others and to myself and I refuse to pretend that I am familiar or that I have history attached to my heels. I am glass clear empty glass. I see the world spinning behind me and through me. I am a stranger’ Thanks to Maria Vaccarella for flagging this up. David Wojnarowicz was a writer, painter, photographer, film maker and performance artist. He died of AIDS in 1992. Seven Miles a Second is  a self portrait, a collaboration between Wojnarowicz and his friend, James Romberger, begun… Read More