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The Con Artists

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Book Review by Kevin Wolf   Luke Healy plays many roles in The Con Artists. He is the creator (writer/artist), he appears-perhaps as himself—in the Prologue, Intermission, and Epilogue (kind of like Mister Rogers appearance before he put his sweater on and tied his shoes to enter the Land of Make-Believe—and with a disguise change (mustache, different glasses and shirt) becomes the main character, Frank, in this fictional graphic novel. One con artist, Giorgio, becomes clear relatively quickly, but how much of his actions are real and how much are a scam? With the plural book title, who might any… Read More

Bobby Baker Diary Drawings Mental Illness and Me

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Guest Review by Katya Robin Bobby Baker is an artist who makes installations and does performances about women’s daily lives. She was diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD; Endnote 1) in 1997.  When she started going to a mental health day centre, diary drawing became a core element of her daily art practice and self-care. Her self-imposed daily drawing continued for the next eleven years, thereafter changing to weekly updates. Over this time, she included a series of more than 700 drawings. A selection of 158 photographs of these drawings were exhibited at The Wellcome Collection (Endnote 2) in 2009…. Read More

New Podcast Episode: Mom Milestones An Interview with Grace Ferris

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Alice Jaggers interviews Grace Ferris on her new book, Mom Milestones: The True Story of the First Seven Years. The book takes the idea of baby milestones and turns it on its head making the focus the mother. Links: Mom Milestones: The True Story of the First Seven Years by Grace Ferris Grace Ferris on Instagram Graphic Medicine Conference This podcast episode was sponsored by:

Our Little Secret & Chartwell Manor

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Book Review by Kevin Wolf   Sometimes the best you can hope for is shedding some light in dark places by trying to bring the truth out. The graphic works discussed here are emotionally draining and might trigger very personal reactions related to childhood sexual trauma that the reader might want to avoid. Unfortunately, a lot of people have a tale of childhood sexual abuse that occurred close to home. According to the United States Center for Disease Control, though likely underestimates, about 25% of girls and 8% of boys experience sexual abuse in childhood; and 91% of the abuse… Read More

Bird Brain: Comics about Mental Health, Starring Pigeons

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Guest Review by Kristina Bowers     Bird Brain: Comics About Mental Health, Starring Pigeons, published in 2019, is illustrator and comic artist Chuck Mullin’s debut book. This collection of personal essays and short comics features pigeons and other birds as anthropomorphic stand-ins for Mullin and the people around her. The comics explore the author’s own experiences with anxiety and depression as well as communicate relatable experiences with mental health and socializing many of us encounter in our day-to-day lives. The World Health Organization estimates that 5% of the global adult population have depression, a great deal of whom face… Read More

Sweaty Palms: The Anthology about Anxiety

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Author’s websites: Liz Enright (http://www.lizenright.com/illustrations); Sage Coffey (https://sagecoffey.com/); Denise Bentulan (https://www.dafont.com/denise-bentulan.d2156/) Guest Book Review by Katie Avila   Sweaty Palms: The Anthology About Anxiety was developed and co-edited by Liz Enright and Sage Coffey with two things in mind: “to start a positive conversation about mental health” and “to create a safe space for artists to express themselves.” To accomplish this, they assembled over 50 comic artists to share their experiences with anxiety and related mental health issues, with Enright and Coffey contributing their own comics as well. After a successful Kickstarter campaign for the book, the anthology was independently… Read More

Psychology: The Comic Book Introduction

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Guest Book Review by Lorraine Chun   If you are looking for a primer or refresher on psychology, this book presents many concepts in a fun and comprehensive format.  The authors present the five concepts in psychology with amusing illustrations and explanations. The book is broken down into three parts. The first is “Making Sense of the World” and covers perception, learning, memory, and thinking. The second is labelled “Making Sense of Ourselves” which covers metacognition, emotion, motivation, and stress and how it effects our health.  The last part covers “Making Sense of Each Other” which reviews language, personality, social… Read More

Medical Mentions Book Reviews IV

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  Where to buy: https://bookshop.org/lists/recently-reviewed-on-graphicmedicine-org 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

Rinse Spin Repeat

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Guest Review by Adela Wu   How can one make sense of global and personal tragedy? With simple, stark hand-drawn lines in the graphic memoir Rinse Spin Repeat, Edith Fassnidge paints a vivid landscape of her experience—and trauma—during the deadly tsunami that claimed over 200,000 lives in Southeast Asia on Boxing Day in 2004. The book’s title itself refers to the metaphor Fassnidge assigns to her emotional trauma: a cycle that drowns her in a giant, vicious wave. Everything seems idyllic at the start of Edith’s journey. She and her boyfriend Matt plan a trip of a lifetime in Thailand… Read More

Medical Mentions Book Reviews III

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Where to Buy: https://bookshop.org/shop/graphicmedicine   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… Read More