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Sterben ist echt das Letzte

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The Fumetto Comic Festival in Lucerne, Switzerland, hosts a series of satellite exhibitions every year as a significant component of their programming, turning the city into a fascinating forum for emerging artists to display work publicly, in venues as diverse as shops selling eyeglasses to run-down bars to disused swimming pools. In 2018 the works of two comic artists framed the doors to a small rectory in the city centre: on the left, my own graphic narrative looking at mental conflict as it manifests in utero, and on the right the original pages from Eva Müller’s graphic novel Sterben ist… Read More

The Shepherd Vol 1-3

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Book review by Kevin Wolf   The Shepherd is a supernatural graphic novel series of three volumes (so far) with at least one more in the works. I will spend less time here on Volume One, because it doesn’t have significant medical content, but I’m providing background of that volume for the reader to better understand the second and third volumes (The Path of Souls and The Path of Dogs, respectively) which do have more medical content. In the first volume and early in the second volume, especially, there are religious metaphors based on the New Testament; Andrea, the primary… Read More

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