By M. T. Bennett From “A Walk to Remember” to “The Fault in Our Stars”, teen romance stories are awash in the cliché of falling in love with someone who has a terminal illness. Author Yoru Sumino and artist Idumi Kirihara (translation by Beni Axia Conrad) give their perspective on it in the manga novel, I Want to Eat Your Pancreas which also has an anime and live-action adaptation. As is often the case, in these kinds of stories a troubled young boy falls for a slowly dying girl. We will call the main character “MC” for this review because… Read More
Love on Ward B
pEarlier this year Prion books brought out “Love on Ward B”, a compendium of “6 of the best Hospital Nurse Picture Library romances ever!” edited by Melissa Hyland. The original comic books, published in the 60s were presumably aimed to provide romantic titillation to girls and young women. It would be difficult to argue that they are great literature, the reason for republishing as a collection might be purely nostalgia based, to provide a gimmicky present for nurses or old fans of emergency ward 10. In their time, however, as Hyland points out, such comics will have had a small… Read More