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COMICS AND MEDICINE: NAVIGATING THE MARGINS 22-24 July 2012 TORONTO, CANADA Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto

CALL FOR PAPERS HERE

NEW!

Welcome to Graphic Medicine

My name is Ian Williams. I did an MA in medical humanities (looking at the discourse of medicine using the conceptual tools of the arts and humanities). I wrote a dissertation on medical narrative in graphic novels. it is my contention that comic/graphic fiction could be a useful resource for healthcare professionals, patients and carers. in this site i list and briefly review all the graphic novels and comic books that i have found to be relevant. I do keep finding more, however, and so will be adding reviews as I read the books.

I set this site up in 2007, I thought I was being pretty clever and original, but after a while I found that there were people out there who had been writing about comics and medicine some time before me. People like Scott of Polite Dissent, who also writes about the portrayal of medicine in other media and Ethan Persoff of Comics With Problems. These guys were there first, I am a relative newbie to writing about comics, although I have always loved them (comics, that is). Soon after I set up the site, one of the fist people to get in touch was Michael Green of Penn State University Medical School, who had started to teach a comics class to medical students around the time I was doing my MA. There were also articles about comics with medical themes starting to appear in the humanities literature, so it seems like a critical mass was starting to build, and it has got more exciting over the last few years, and will continue to gain momentum over the next few, as people realise that comics can articulate profound truths about the discourse of medicine, and healthcare in general.

Comics and Medicine: The Sequential Art of Illness Reports, Photos and Blogs

Graphic medicine: Visualizing the stigma of illness 17/11/2011 Henry moore institute leeds

See the Call for Papers Here

A Disclaimer

When I set up this site, rather than just rave about how great everything was, or repeat the publishers blurb, I tried to critically appraise each graphic novel or comic. The reviews reflected my own take on each work, how much i enjoyed it and what i thought of the artwork. I tried to be honest and fair, but at the same time I was a bit of a comics fan and an advocate of the medium so the reviews were bound to be on the tame side. Over the last few years I have actually met, and got to know some of the people whose books I had reviewed. I liked them as people. If I had written anything at all derogatory I felt bad (I'm not sure I'm cut out to be a critic). Now it is often the case that I know the people before I read the book, so just bear that in mind when you are reading my reviews- I'm not hard faced enough to slate the work of people I like! I also make comics myself under a nom de plume and know what it feels like to be at the recieving end of a critics opinion. The site is meant to point readers in the direction of works they might find useful so the reviews are not comprehensive, or academic.

Copyright policy:

I am very aware that the graphic art shown on this site is copyrighted by the publishers of the volumes shown. I have made the decision to show only the covers of the graphic novels or comics reviewed, on the basis that these covers are widely reproduced on the web, especially by vendors such as Amazon, and The Book Depository, from whom they are availiable to buy. I have assumed that as I may be assisting in publicising these works, the publishers will not object. I would not, however, reproduce artwork from within the works without seeking permission from the publishers/author. If a publisher objects to my using a cover image, i will remove it at once.