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
Comic and Mental Health: Jobs and PhDs at Liverpool
We had an email from David Hering who is running a project at the University of Liverpool called Illustrating Futures, which looks at comics and young persons’ mental health, in association with the Lottery/Children in Need funded social enterprise Comics Youth and in a semi-partnership with Tate Liverpool, where they have held two residencies (and looking at a third in October). David tells us that some funded PhD posts and a post-doc fellowship have just been advertised at Liverpool and they would welcome applications from people who would like to research in the field of comics and mental health. The… Read More
CFP: Uniting Two Perspectives.
Uniting Two Perspectives on Mental Illness: Philosophy and Linguistics University of Essex, 13-14 September 2018 Mental illness has long been of interest to researchers in the humanities, including philosophy, linguistics, sociology, history and politics. In a domain where psychologists and psychiatrists have focused on identifying interventions and developing explanatory models, scholars in the humanities have preferred to explore broad conceptual and cultural questions. For instance: Where do notions like “mental health” and “mental illness” come from? What can we learn from their history? How do specific diagnostic categories emerge? How does psychiatric language shape the way we think about ourselves… Read More
CFP: Madness and Literature: What Fiction Can Do for the Understanding of Mental Illness
Philosophers have considered the relation between madness and literature since Plato’s Phaedrus. Mental illness has been a favorite topic for great authors throughout literary history just as psychologists and psychiatrists like Sigmund Freud and Karl Jaspers have been interested in and influenced by literature. Pioneers within philosophy, psychiatry and the world of art share the endeavor to explore and explain the human mind and behavior, including what a society deems as being outside perceived normality. This conference seeks to explore intersections between literature and mental health issues. Possible paper topics include, but are not limited to, the following: Representations of… Read More
The Return of the Honey Buzzard by Aimée de Jongh
By Kevin Wolf This fictional graphic novel has the impact and realism of a non-fictional work about bullying, depression and suicide. The back cover indicates this work is Aimée de Jongh’s first graphic novel, though it’s a very mature work. The drawings are beautiful, showing scenes from nature, grade school, and adulthood. The story flows naturally with events surrounding Simon. He’s having trouble closing the multi-generational used bookstore he inherited from his father. The graphic work shows recent and past painful moments that he feels extreme guilt about observing but not preventing. Some scenes Simon lives and some are… Read More