Beautifully designed, the minimalist structure of this sparsely laid out volume makes it feel more like an art book than a graphic novel. Mio Matsumoto is an artist from Japan, and was studying in London when she was found to have a cancerous growth on her tongue. She travelled back to Japan for treatment and documented her illness in this sketchbook diary. The scratchy, deliberately “inept” biro drawings are very of the moment (think David Shrigley) but convey little in the way of emotional depth, leaving the text to convey the authors thoughts. The the idiomatic narration and romantic preoccupations… Read More
The Complete Maus
I include the Complete Maus here for three reasons: firstly, it is generally held to be one of the benchmarks against which other graphic novels are judged, a work that has made people who don’t like comics read comics, and a pinnacle of achievement that Spiegelman has spent the last twenty years trying to either live up to, or get away from. If you only ever read one graphic novel….(Actually, Art Spiegelman doesn’t like the term “graphic novel”, even though he is credited as being one of the Godfathers of the medium. He prefers plain old “comics” or “comix”). Secondly,… Read More
Janet and Me: An Illustrated Story of Love and Loss
The title really says it all. This is more an illustrated book with comics elements rather than a graphic novel per se. It is New York cartoonist Stan Mack’s homage to his lover Janet Bode who died of disseminated breast cancer, a touching and engaging account of their experiences in “Cancerland”. Unlike the other books about cancer listed on this site, this one is about dying rather than surviving. Written by the carer rather than the patient, it also covers the grief, lonelyness and legal complications of the immediate bereavement period. It covers similar themes to Cancer Vixen and Mom’s… Read More
The Spiral Cage
Originally published in 1990, this is a bit of a gem. Al Davison was born with spina bifida. his parents were told he wouldn’t live. Then, when he did, they were told that he would never walk. He taught himself to walk aged five and attended a “normal” school, where he was called “spaka” by his classmates. Al became an artist and illustrator. Although he can walk on his “scarecrow” legs, he still suffers considerably. He endured countless operations as a child and bouts of ME as an adult. He took up karate, which came in handy on several occasions… Read More