Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Brian Fies

  • Drawing the chemotherapy chair

    Juliet McMullinCalifornia, United States “Arrangement in Grey and Black” is a panel from Brian Fies’ comic Mom’s Cancer (2006). Objects from Mom’s life fill this panel: a walking stick whittled on a hiking trip, her poker video game, a large Jack-in-the-Box strawberry shake, and a syringe. Moments of a life manifested on paper. Amongst the…

  • Life is a game: visual metaphors in Brian Fies’s Mom’s Cancer

    Sathyaraj VenkatesanAnu Mary PeterTiruchirapalli, India Motivated by a “desire to give meaning to the lives lived in uncertainty”1 and illustrate the experience of enduring an illness, the creators of comics often resort to visual metaphors that render a patient’s physical and psychological experiences tangible.2,3 In Mom’s Cancer (2006) Brian Fies deploys a series of visual…

  • Graphic medicine

    Ian WilliamsWales, United Kingdom Introduction In case you have not noticed, graphic novels have been cropping up in literary reviews that would have previously been the reserve of prose. Thanks to the UK broadsheet newspapers, which have been championing the graphic form for a good 10 years or so, a distinct genre of autobiographical comics…