Medical Mentions are 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 for each. Prior Medical Mentions can be… Read More
Space Junk
review by Karol Kovalovich Weaver Julian Hanshaw’s Space Junk tells the story of four people on a planet whose inhabitants must abandon it for a new planet. A timely work, the graphic novel paints a picture of environmental degradation, social breakdown, and personal trauma. Despite these heavy subjects, Hanshaw shares a message of hope, encouraging readers not to be weighed down by their pasts and the challenges that they face. Four main characters, Faith, Hoshi, Pieter, and Steve, inhabit a planet set to be abandoned. The remaining residents work to pack up food supplies, remove usable buildings, and cull livestock,… Read More
The Naked Tree
by Matt Peters The trauma of violence can linger decades later, waiting for the slightest reminder to bring it back to the surface. A resemblance of something from the past can steal the survivor from the present, forcing them to relive a separation, a loss, or an atrocity. Clinical terms like post-traumatic stress disorder can’t fully describe how the experience permeates a survivor’s life, turning the past into something inescapable. It can haunt not only survivors but also their posterity, as behavioral cues and epigenetic markers—chemical changes to DNA—are passed on to the next generation, causing the initial shock… Read More
Not My Shame
“There’s something really empowering about telling your own story” So begins this powerful, mixed-media graphic tale. It is a phrase that encapsulates one of the principles of narrative medicine, and so graphic medicine, too. Many graphic stories deal with trauma; the ones I find most powerful tend to come from first hand experience, told in raw, unfiltered words and images. This is one such work. Hats off to Singing Dragon, purveyors of some excellent comics, for publishing this book, which challenges the misogyny and rape culture that seem to permeate our popular media and society. Part visual diary, part interior monologue, the narrative is not… Read More
Trauma is Really Strange
Guest review by John Pollard. Trauma is a complex and dense subject. Developing something approaching a full understanding of it can take years. In Trauma is Really Strange, Steve Haines and Sophie Standing have produced a solid and digestible jumping-off point for those wishing to begin an exploration of the topic. It is clear from reading this comic that it is not just written for those who may have an academic interest in the subject: it is also appropriate for those who are struggling to understand their own firsthand experience of trauma. As in their other comic, Pain is Really Strange, Haines and Standing offer up a clear,… Read More
At War with Yourself
Here is another comic pamphlet from Singing Dragon, the imprint of Jessica Kingsley Publishers that has released a number of titles of relevance to Graphic Medicine, under the stewardship of Mike Medaglia. The author, Samuel C. Williams, tackles the subject of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder by interviewing his friend, Matt, an ex soldier, who has opened up to him about his own PTSD. Walking the dog, Samuel asks Matt about his experiences during his 20 years in the army and Matt, who has been through therapy and so knows some theory, does a good job of explaining how trauma disrupts the processing of memory –… Read More
James Sturm 2014 Keynote Address
As preparation ramps up for the 2015 Comics & Medicine Conference in Riverside, California, here is James Sturm‘s keynote address, “Applied Cartooning: Cartoonist Veterans Sessions.” The address is broken into three segments below. It was delivered at the 2014 Comics & Medicine conference on the campus of Johns Hopkins Medical Center in Baltimore, Maryland. James is the co-founder of the Center for Cartoon Studies in White River Junction, Vermont.
New Podcast: Transformations: Therapy/Not Therapy
Panel 2C from the 2013 Comics & Medicine panel in Brighton brings us four presentations that relate to the theme of therapy. Use the Quicktime player below to view images along with the audio of Panel 2B. If you don’t have Quicktime, you can listen to an audio-only version of the keynote presentation below. First up on this panel is Sarah Lightman (author of the forthcoming Book of Sarah from Myriad Editions) of the University of Glasgow and Laydeez do Comics with her talk, “Metamorphosing Difficulties – Post Traumatic Growth in the Autobiographical Comics of Sarah Leavitt, Nicola Streeten and Maureen… Read More
The War Within: One More Step at a Time
Awaiting review. Want to write a review for us? GoodReads review.