Guest review by Gene Bild Set in New Zealand, where the author lives and has a psychiatric therapy practice, Operation Pokies opens with adult animal characters bemoaning the malign effects that pokies (the word in New Zealand for slot machines) have on their village and personal lives. Then the story segues into a children’s crusade in which cute animal children and their insect allies, disgusted and angered by the way pokies have warped their lives, take action and dump all their villages’ slot machines into the ocean. The Amazon site for the eBook gives some startling statistics, without citation,… Read More
The Hospital Suite
Book Review by Kevin Wolf John Porcellino, in his memoir The Hospital Suite, is medically troubled. His difficulties are primarily physical, though when the physical problems ease mental health comes to the fore. And I’m sure many argue that mental health often has physical roots, especially when treated with medications. The Hospital Suite is a non-standard case study of the ailments and treatments of one person. Why do I use the word “non-standard?” Unlike The Hospital Suite, standard case studies are not written by the person under treatment, but usually written by the treating professional. John provides amazing… Read More
Eating Matters
Book Review by Kevin Wolf Ink in Water: An Illustrated Memoir (Or, How I Kicked Anorexia’s Ass and Embraced Body Positivity) Eat and Love Yourself Blossoms and Bones: Drawing a Life Back Together Guts Fat Free: Amazing All-True Adventures of Supersize Woman! Eating is an essential part of life. When we have a problem with food it impacts everything else about ourselves. This review covers five books that relate to eating matters. These graphic works provide a variety of very personal stories (except Eat and Love Yourself which is fictional) of eating disorders. They reflect the memoirist’s environment,… Read More
Fights by Joel Christian Gill
Book Review by Kevin Wolf Fights: One Boy’s Triumph over Violence by Joel Christian Gill is a book of lessons provided in a memoir. The lessons are there for the reader to find, because they’re the lessons Joel learns along his very difficult youthful path. I use Joel’s first name throughout this review, because the story mainly covers his childhood and supports familiarity and empathy. Joel’s honesty and very hard life bleeds through. Though fighting is a major theme, there are also tales of bullying, racism, domestic violence, overcoming sexual abuse, exploring the outdoors, fresh starts with a new persona… Read More
Upgrade Soul
Book review by Kevin Wolf What if you were on the steep downward slope of life and were given the chance that you could live a lot longer than any actuarial life expectancy—perhaps to age 200—would you go through a risky experiment for such a long life? Personal ambition, quality/quantity of life desires, and experimental post-mortem ethical quandaries abound in the graphic science-fiction work by Ezra Clayton Daniels called Upgrade Soul (US). US could be a metaphor for humans struggling with their mortality, but it’s so much more. This is a wonderful, haunting tale presented from many perspectives: a brilliant… Read More
The Shepherd Vol 1-3
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
Eat More Comics: The Best of the Nib
Book Review by Kevin Wolf The Nib was nominated for several Ignatz awards at the September 2019 Small Press eXpo (SPX) in Baltimore, MD. The nominations were for Outstanding Anthology for their Death and Family issues (Edited by Matt Bors, Matt Lubchanksy and Eleri Harris), and for Outstanding Series (Matt Bors, editor-in-chief). The Nib won for Outstanding Series. At Cartoon Crossroads Columbus (CXC) on September 27, 2019, from a CXC press release, “Matt Bors received the Transformative Work Award. Bors arrived in Columbus this week seeking to drive attention to the financial reversal faced by the satirical magazine The Nib,… Read More
Rx
‘You wont know the shape of your unravelling until it happens’ says Rachel Lindsay’s disheveled comic avatar, sitting on her bed in a breeze-block room of the mental hospital to which she has just been committed. ‘But you probably have some idea what it looks like’ adds her previous corporate self, from the advertising office where she was in charge of marketing antidepressants. Rachel’s fall has been sudden and dramatic: from well-paid, corporate ‘suit’ to ranting unemployed maniac, shouting obscenities at authority and at her concerned parents. It is not often, nowadays, that I find myself unable to put down… Read More
Rock Steady: Brilliant Advice from My Bipolar Life
Book Review by Kevin Wolf Ellen Forney’s newest book, Rock Steady: Brilliant Advice from My Bipolar Life will be a very helpful tool for many. Rock Steady covers bipolar mood disorder in particular, and mood disorders in general. The book provides coping tools and treatments. It’s not a graphic “novel,” because it’s a work of non-fiction that can be used as a teaching tool for the general public and health care providers interested in the topics. It has no continuing characters, except the author, who appears infrequently; and is mostly text though there are cartoon images throughout. I recommend this work for… Read More
Call for Contributors for “Missing Panels”
Call for Contributors for “Missing Panels” Zine funded by the University of Leicester – Wellcome Trust ISSF. “Missing Panels” focuses on the impact a lack of representation has on the lives and mental health of members of BME communities, illustrating the need for more equal representation as one of the many strategies required to build a more equal society. Specifically, we are looking for contributors to create a 2 or 4-page full colour comic revolving around questions such as: i) is NHS outreach/campaign material inclusive to BME communities? ii) in what way has your personal experience of accessing health care… Read More