Book Review by Kevin Wolf Medical Mentions is 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… Read More
Tyranny
Guest Book Review by Ryan Wright According to a 2020 report from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Boston Children’s Hospital, 28.8 million Americans will experience an eating disorder in their lifetimes, and one person dies from an eating disorder every 52 minutes.1 The insidious nature of eating disorders, in this case Anorexia Nervosa, is aptly portrayed as a tyrannical demon in Lesley Fairfield’s book Tyranny. In Tyranny, Fairfield masterfully depicts the struggle of Anna, a young woman grappling with unrealistic portrayals of women in the media, peer pressure, and a family that, although well… Read More
Lighter Than My Shadow
Guest review by Crystal Yin Lie added 20/3/18 “Pictures mark an increase in the symbolic tenor of the discourse of anorexia,” writes Erin O’Connor in her study of how late-19th century medical photography came to frame anorexia nervosa as a discrete pathology. Wresting the representation of anorexia (and eating disorders more generally) from the realms of medical science, contemporary writers and artists have turned to a different pictorial form—the graphic form—creating a profusion of narratives including British artist Katie Green’s debut memoir, Lighter Than My Shadow (2013). In My Shadow, Green depicts Katie’s experience with eating disorders—beginning with childhood anorexia—anxiety,… Read More
Dust Motes
Thick and Thin by Bruce Mutard
I have just returned from the Graphic Novel Conference at Mansfield College Oxford, where MK, Michael Green and I conducted a panel on Graphic Medicine. Among the speakers was the Australian graphic novelist and writer Bruce Mutard to whom I was introduced by Paul Gravett. Bruce was interested in what we are doing at Graphic Medicine, and told me that he had previously drawn a strip on eating disorders in the male. The strip is viewable online (scroll down through Bruce’s short stories to find it) Published in Tango, Love and Food. Edited by Bernard Caleo, published by Cardigan Comics. This… Read More
The House That Groaned
Awaiting GM review Karrie’s talk at Comics and Medicine: Visualising the Stigma of Illness Amazon blurb: “141 Rottin Road ‘A cosy, one-bedroom apartment on the first floor of a charming Victorian conversion. Newly decorated and with a separate kitchen and reception room. Located just a bus ride away from a wide range of shops, restaurants and bars.’ Welcome to The House that Groaned and the six lonely inhabitants of its separate flats, characters so at odds with themselves and their bodies that they could only have stepped out of the pages of a comic novel. There’s Barbara, our make-up artist heroine and… Read More
Lucille
awaiting review on GM amazon blurb: ‘Winner of the Rene Goscinny Prize! With Lucille, Ludovic Debeurme takes on the difficult world of adolescence, following the life of a young anorexic woman and the difficult relationships she has with others, who have significant problems of their own. Influenced by psychoanalysis and the exploration of dreams, Debeurme explores life and fantasies with elegant clean graphics and a profound love of the games of childhood.’