Comics, or “graphic medicine”, are helping to bridge the gap between patients and scientists when it comes to sharing important medical information.
Customer Connor McLay at the Iron Age Comics stand at the Armageddon Expo in Auckland, with shop owner David Cryer.
Photo: Alexia Russell/The Detail
Comics aren’t all caped crusaders and evil villains – they didn’t start that way, and they certainly aren’t evolving in that direction.
Increasingly the art form is being used to educate and improve communication, notably between medical experts and their patients but in all sorts of other realms too.
And forget low-brow; one of the latest developments is a collaboration between a University of Auckland professor of media and screen studies and the institution’s Centre for Brain Research.
Professor Neal Curtis turned to comics for light relief when he was dealing with some heavy subjects during his PhD, and was soon hooked. Now he’s a specialist.
Auckland University arts professor Neal Curtis
Photo: Supplied
“A lot of clinicians and a lot of academics, a lot of people working in science and health, I think are becoming increasingly aware of the power and potential of comics,” he says.
“They have been used for a long time within medical and health institutions, and teaching.”
He was at a university research workshop looking for funding for a comics lab, but he was shoulder-tapped by scientists who wanted to use the medium of comics to explain to patients with brain tumours what’s going on with them, and how the procedures involved work.
The result, in progress now, is an eight-part series with different New Zealand artists including Janina Gaudin, a comic illustrator also known as Miss Diabetes.
This is not a first. We now have comics on cancer, mental health issues like depression and anxiety, and more recently on neurodivergence.
Curtis tells The Detail today that after the wealth of misinformation that came with the pandemic, he wanted to shift his area of research to see how his knowledge of the comics medium could be used to disseminate knowledge and support truth.
“So that’s when I started going to my colleagues and saying ‘hey, I do comics, who wants to translate stuff?’
“It works at two poles.
“You’ve got the academics who are trying to communicate and disseminate their research and access different audiences outside of academia and clinical institutions.
“The other pole, you’ve got individual comic creators who have suffered from an illness, a disease, some kind of debilitating condition or have a disability. And they use comics as a vehicle to kind of speak back to medical institutions.”
We peek into a world where comics are a big deal: we’re off to Armageddon, the four-day pop culture festival that was held in Auckland over Labour Weekend.
Iron Age Comics shop owner David Cryer says there’s a healthy comic scene in New Zealand, but it’s an international hobby.
“That’s what’s fun about it.”
It’s also not just a boys’ world. “Romance comics are going through a big boom at the moment,” he says.
“What I’m noticing at every convention I go to, more young women are buying comics, it’s really good.”
Cryer collects Iron Man comics – he has every one that’s ever been released – but his collection is nothing compared with some of the big guns in this world.
For example, Action Comics #1 was sold for $US3.2 million in 2014.
But just because some comics have appreciated in value out of sight, it doesn’t mean there’s a lot of money in it.
“You’re not going to make a killing, but you’re going to do ok.”
We also talk to Armageddon organiser and founder Bill Geradts, a writer and a comic book publisher – he owns Beyond Reality Books.
“Comics have been around a lot longer than people think,” he says.
“They will evolve, they will change, but they’ll always be here.”
Find out more about the fascinating history of comics by listening to the full episode.
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