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The Shepherd Vol 1-3

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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

For Real, Issue One: The Oven

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Review of For Real (Issue One): The Oven by James Romberger By Kevin Wolf Though I grew up reading comic books, I rarely read stand-alone comics today. I usually wait for a graphic novel to come out, which might be a multi-comic story arc. Comics are often sold as twenty or so page “pamphlets,” often with regular frequency. Some single stories in a single comic have achieved acclaim (e.g. The 8-page story Master Race by Al Feldstein writer and B. Krigstein artist in Impact issue 1, March 1955 EC Publications; about a holocaust survivor encountering a Nazi war criminal on… Read More

This Week in Graphic Medicine (2/23/18)

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‘This Week in Graphic Medicine’ highlights relevant articles (and tweets) about comics in medicine published during the week (Saturday – Friday). Links are typically presented without commentary, unless clarification of relevance is necessary, with credit given to those who flagged them up where possible. So without further ado… Matthew’s Pick of the Week… This week I want to keep it short and sweet by highlighting Just Peachy Comics – a webcomic I just discovered this week on Facebook thanks to a friend’s share. Holly describes her comics as a way to journal as her therapist suggested – lucky for us, the… Read More

Trauma is Really Strange

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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

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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

Podcast Episode 13: Meaning Making Through Drawing and Comics

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In this week’s Graphic Medicine podcast, the first in a series, we’ll hear two lightning presentations from the 2015 Comics & Medicine conference in Riverside, California. Both presentations discuss how making art and comics helps create meaning and understanding, and can, in some cases, change behavior. You can listen to an image-enhanced version of the podcast here: Or you can find the episode in iTunes here. First we’ll hear from Roderick Castle, an art therapist in Rochester, New York, who works with veterans. You can learn more about Roderick from his feature in this month’s “Art Therapy Today”, published by the… Read More

Carol Tyler: Bringing It All Back Home

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In this week’s Graphic Medicine Podcast, Carol Tyler’s keynote address from the Graphic Medicine 2015 conference in Riverside, California. The talk is titled, “Bringing It All Back Home.” With this being the Thanksgiving holiday in the U.S., I thought it would be a great tie-in to post Carol’s talk in conjunction with the Great Thanksgiving Listen. Here’s a video about that project from StoryCorps: Carol Tyler’s monumental book, Soldier’s Heart: The Campaign to Understand My WWII Veteran Father was released this week. The process which led to the creation of this book was a monumental act of intense listening, intense caregiving,… Read More

James Sturm 2014 Keynote Address

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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.

You’ll Never Know

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This series of three gorgeous memoirs shares Carol Tyler’s effort to investigate and retell her father’s traumatic experiences in World War II. Along the way we are also witness to struggles with her marriage, raising her daughter, her efforts to be a good daughter herself, and much more. Carol, a painter, has a stunning visual style, and she uses the landscape format of the book, meant to resemble a photo album, to her (and our) great advantage. Paul Gravett chose You’ll Never Know as the best autobiography/biography of 2012. In his blog post he wrote, …in the end what floored… Read More