by Dr. Javier A Suarez DISCLAIMERS The review is split into spoiler-free and spoiler-filled sections with clear demarcations for each, but even the “spoiler-free” sections will delve into the themes and general set-up of the book. The book contains depictions of serious child abuse. The book also contains disturbing portrayals of racially motivated violence against Black people. I am not a Black person, so the point of view of my review will invariably be from a perspective outside of this particular lived experience. Content advisory: For domestic violence, including child abuse: National Domestic Violence Hotline in the United States… Read More
A Mild Case of Mass Hysteria
by Laboni Das Some illnesses begin with a virus. Others begin with a rumour. Felix Cheong’s A Mild Case of Mass Hysteria, illustrated by Ritwick Roy and Riddhi Trivedi, opens with an event that sounds too strange to be true. Set in Singapore in October 1967, the graphic novel revisits one of the country’s most unusual episodes of collective fear: suo yang, when hundreds of people believed their genitals were retracting into their bodies and that death would soon follow. For many readers outside Southeast Asia, this episode will be entirely unfamiliar. Yet Cheong wisely refuses to treat it as… Read More
Purgatory Funeral Cakes Volume 1
awaiting review
Freedom Hospital: A Syrian Story
By Aaradhana Natarajan I first came across Freedom Hospital: A Syrian Story when I asked a librarian to recommend graphic novels a medical student should read. Hamid Sulaiman’s black-and-white book was one of the small stack that I ended up leaving with. It was also the heaviest by far, dealing with the devastation of the Syrian civil war and the danger in parallel efforts to document it. The story begins and ends in the springtime, spread over an unspecified year at the beginning of the Arab Spring. Bashar al-Assad is still in power, pro-democracy protestors are singing their patriotism… Read More