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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

Guest Post: Vicarious Trauma Illustrated, Rebecca Bloom

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Guest Post by Rebecca Bloom, LMHC, ATR-BC Art Therapist Instagram: rtext www.bloomcounseling.com When mainstream media began to cover that ICE was imprisoning migrant children in cages, I was on the Kornati Islands in Croatia.  From a speck of limestone in the middle of the Adriatic Sea, I was doing my best to support my friends in the states as they told me about the unrelenting grief they were feeling.  Living in a two room stone house with solar power, cold water only and Wi-Fi, I was sending friends photos of olive trees, street cats and sunsets trying to tell them we would find away to end this. I had been… Read More

Dumb: Living without a Voice

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Book Review by Kevin Wolf   If I had to give a one word description to this graphic work it would be “Loud” or if two words: “Brilliantly Loud.” Dumb: Living without a Voice, a Graphic Memoir by Georgia Webber is brilliant because it’s a very smart work and because it’s visually stunning. This work is in black and white, with the loudness coming from the orange/red portrayal of the author/artist’s and everyone else’s voice. This graphic work shows the changes, often wordlessly, that Ms. Webber goes through to recover from the loss of one of her essential characteristics: her voice…. Read More

Not My Shame

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“There’s something really empowering about telling your own story” So begins this powerful, mixed-media graphic tale. It is a phrase that encapsulates one of the principles of narrative medicine, and so graphic medicine, too. Many graphic stories deal with trauma; the ones I find most powerful tend to come from first hand experience, told in raw, unfiltered words and images. This is one such work. Hats off to Singing Dragon, purveyors of some excellent comics, for publishing this book, which challenges the misogyny and rape culture that seem to permeate our popular media and society. Part visual diary, part interior monologue, the narrative is not… Read More

Something Terrible by Dean Trippe

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Book Review by Kevin Wolf   Everything about this graphic memoir is brief, but it packs a wallop. It’s only fourteen pages plus a four page epilogue, a foreword by Kate Beaton (Hark, a Vagrant), and afterword and closing thoughts by the author. Something Terrible is about surviving childhood sexual abuse and its continued torment into adulthood. The book is stark, in black and white with a gray wash and one color page and a just preceding color panel. The book is often wordless, allowing the images to carry the weight. This was a very courageous memoir for the author… 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

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