guest review by Rebecca Starr IF: A Memoir of Infertility details Sheila Alexander’s journey through in vitro fertilization (IVF). After trying to conceive a child for over a year, Sheila’s doctor suggests IVF as a next step. Her graphic memoir details her 407-day IVF journey. While Sheila does not narrate every day of her IVF journey, she takes us through the most important ones. Her often-humorous illustrations help describe procedures and internal changes. A hysteroscopy is visualized as a fashion shoot for the fallopian tubes, and after follicle stimulation, the increased number of eggs stage a protest to “emancipate the… Read More
Good Eggs: A Memoir by Phoebe Potts
Review by Bethany Mannon, PhD Good Eggs narrates Phoebe Potts’ work to conceive in her mid-thirties, after years of expecting that she could become pregnant “the natural way.” “Each month I get my hopes up,” she writes, alongside an image of herself sitting on the toilet and reaching for a tampon. “Each month I count nine months out to see when I might have a baby. And each month, despite charting and timing & peeing & trying – I’m still not pregnant” (xiv). Good Eggs joins Paula Knight’s comic Spooky Womb, Emily Steinberg’s graphic memoir Broken Eggs. and many prose… Read More
Oh Joy, Sex Toy
Guest Review by: PF Anderson Well, we all know who to call when we see a ghost (Ghostbusters!), but who are you going to call to review a comic book on sex toys? Of course, your local little old lady librarian, right? Well, maybe not, but that’s what happened here. I’m a medical librarian and creeping up on retirement age faster than I’d like. I am probably the last person on earth I’d expect to find writing a book review for a book on … sex toys? So think of it this way: If I say buy it (which is… Read More
Probably Nothing: A Diary of Not Your Average Nine Months
guest review and response illustration by Northwestern medical student Runjhun Bhatia Probably Nothing is, when you initially read the summary, a depressing concept. Nine months of pregnancy compounded by bowel cancer, you think. Or perhaps vice versa. How awful. The graphic novel is a simplistically drawn diary-like account of having cancer and being pregnant. Matilda’s experience could probably be a good insight for anyone with cancer or for a woman who is pregnant. The graphic novel is exhaustive — though the drawings are not detailed, the detail Matilda goes into about her life throughout these circumstances is extensive. It becomes… Read More
Pregnant Butch
Knocked Up, Knocked Down: Postcards from the Brink of Parenthood
Oh Joy Sex Toy
Oh Joy Sex Toy is the webcomic of Portland comics artist Erika Moen and her husband Matthew Nolan. She reviews sex toys and discusses sexual health issues such as STDs, contraception, and pregnancy. From her site: What IS Oh Joy Sex Toy? Oh Joy, Sex Toy (OJST) is a weekly webcomic by Erika Moen and Matthew Nolan that debuted April 2013 and has updated every Tuesday since, bringing you reviews of everything that relates to sex, sexuality and the sex industry. From sex toy reviews to sex education to interviews with sex industry professionals and more! With the aid of curated guest reviewers,… Read More
Pins + Needles
Brighton conference presenter Rachel Abrams sends news: “I’m delighted to share news with you that my long-gestated project, Pins and Needles, about Gen X women navigating fertility, is finally up online and out in the world.” You can check out her new project site here: http://www.gotpinsandneedles.com
Pregnancy and Miscarriage in A Comic Diary
Met cartoonist Anna Brewer in Glasgow, at the 2013 IBDS Conference. She shared that her online comic journal has included work on learning she was pregnant and the miscarriage that followed. You can read the first portion, about the pregnancy here. And the portion about the miscarriage here. The full blog can be accessed here. Thanks for sharing your work, Anna!
Spooky Womb
Paula Knight’s Spooky Womb is an excerpt from her graphic memoir in progress The Facts of Life, which was shortlisted for the Myriad Editions First Fictions Graphic Novel competition. In this excerpt, she very creatively (and nearly wordlessly) recounts her “interactions” with fertility, pregnancy, and loss via an anthropomorphized female reproductive tract. The three panel horizontal layout serves her narrative quite well, while varied background shading seems to reflect the diurnal and menstrual cycles. A skilled illustrator, Knight is able to convey a wide range of gesture and emotion from her visceral character, making one wonder which is the protagonist – uterus… Read More