by Dr. Velebita Koričančić, Mexico City In Elizabeth Swados’ My Depression: A Picture Book (2005), depression appears as a cloud and a black hole. Yet the book’s true force lies in how these images keep time. Swados gives depression a rhythm: it starts and stops, returns and interrupts, accelerates and stalls. By “syncopated” in this review’s title, I mean an uneven beat that throws ordinary life off tempo. Depression, in Swados’s hands, is timed. Prior readings of My Depression have focused on metaphor. Elisabeth El Refaie’s chapter on Swados’s work as “trapped in spacetime” in Visual Metaphor and Embodiment in Graphic… Read More
Down to the Bone – a leukemia story
By PF Anderson After I finished reading Down to the Bone, I poured out my feelings in the following short reaction comic on Instagram. The background images and artwork are all from the book and are Catherine’s artwork, to which I added words and layout to express myself. You might think of this as a Tiktok or Instagram reaction reel, but formatted as a comic reacting to another comic. Catherine’s images represented here: Image 1 (Panel 2: cover; panel 3: 131) Image 2 (Panel 1: 131; panel 2: pg. 50 – 51; panel 3: 60; panel 4: 63) Image 3… Read More
This Might Surprise You – A Breast Cancer Story
by Janet Chan Hayley Gullen’s This Might Surprise You details her journey being diagnosed with early onset HER2 positive breast cancer. She starts with finding her breast lump and takes us through her experience being diagnosed and enduring multiple treatments. Breast cancer is one of the most diagnosed cancers in women globally with an estimated 2.3 million women diagnosed in 2022 (WHO, 2025). Early onset breast cancer is when breast cancer is diagnosed before age 50 and its incidence is on the rise (Brown, n.d.). HER2 positive breast cancer is a quickly growing cancer that accounts for about 20% of… Read More
Hanging On By A Thread
awaiting review
Record of Glass Castle
awaiting review
When Everything Turned Blue
by Soph Myers-Kelley Alessandro Baronciani, an Italian author, originally published this book with Bao Publishing in 2020 (and in Italian). However, Dark Horse Publishing is the first to release it in English. The book does not appear to be a memoir, but an original story about a young woman suffering an undiagnosed illness and seeking diagnosis. Her journey towards healing and understanding is the primary focus of this book. Baronciani’s art is the highlight of this art piece for me. Most graphic medicine books utilize varying blacks, whites, and greys for the majority of their art. Some will use choice… Read More
Side Effects
awaiting review