Somatographics

Comics, bodies, health, artists, disease, history, future, medicine, more.

[somatographics-blog]

Georgia Webber and “Dumb”

Georgia Webber has a comics series out call Dumb.

Due to injury, Georgia has a chronic voice condition that has forced her into some drastic lifestyle changes. Her autopathographic work is a patient narrative. Although Dumb includes essays by others who use or value their voices in specific ways, I find her comics the most compelling component of her series.

In her comics we see Georgia’s pain, distress, and frustration as she struggles to find a new “voice.” Once again, comics render her journey more eloquently than words alone.

In this last image Georgia uses pathographics to explore, express, and integrate her  objective/anatomic and subjective/painful bodies simultaneously and on her own terms. 

-KW

[somatographics-blog]

Remember the scene in Tomorrow Never Dies where James Bond is handcuffed and abandoned shirtless, in a shower, by the Chinese spy Wai Lin? Does Mr. Bond’s pose remind you of something?  His pose perfectly mimics that of a dissected human subject illustrated in an anatomy text from 1749. “Table 9” from Tables of the Skeleton and Muscles of the Human Body. 

For more images from Albinus’ Tables of the Skeleton and Muscles of the Human Body, with engravings by Jan Wanelaar, check out Historical Anatomies On The Web.

Pictorial Anatomy of 007 by Kriota Willberg.

-KW

[somatographics-blog]

Wunderkammer!

The Hagströmer Medico-Historical Library’s Wunderkammer website features high-resolution and highly interesting images from old books, grouped by subject, era, art technique, and even emotion. Check out these colorful eyecatchers:

Nerve cells!

Breast ducts and glandules!

Olfactory mucosa from a rabbit!

Also this 16th century eye candy:

YOU’RE PACKED AND YOU’RE STACKED ‘SPECIALLY IN THE BACK BROTHER WANNA THANK (checks credits) JOSEPH MAURER FOR A BUTT LIKE THAT

(Hat tip to Metafilter for the Wunderkammer post)

- CL

[somatographics-blog]

Let’s wear our insides on the outside!

“Organ Donor” shirt by Young Lovers

“Human anatomy science patchwork t-shirt” by Etsy’s takeahalliday (sold out)

“Cardiovascular system” shirt by Skeletees

Freezer paper stencil organ shirt school project by Deceptively Educational

“Dem Guts” swimsuit by Black Milk (sold out)

“Know Your Organs” by Redbubble’s Mr. Strawberry

“Human Map” t-shirt

- CL

[somatographics-blog]

Anuj Shrestha has a series of mini comics called “Genus” which he describes as “a horror-noir series exploring themes of power, nature, and fear.” But I see it as a narrative about epidemiology and the “othering” of persons who experience disease or deformity. The illustrations are beautiful and disturbing. 

The image of the fetus seems to be inspired by the 18th century mid-wife/physician William Smellie. (Yes, he was male and yes his last name was Smellie.) The side view of the muscular cadaver is after an image from an anatomy text by the 16th century anatomist Andreas Vesalius. 

By inserting the plant-like heads of his “Genus” characters onto the historical representations of the human body, Anuj repurposes centuries of human history to make it compatible with his comics series. -KW

[somatographics-blog]

Emi Gennis

Emi Gennis makes comics about health and history in a way that draws (ha!) you in with her first panel. This page from The Radium Girls demonstrates the way she places pathology into an “every day” context. This mini is also brilliant for its use of color.

In her story Trepanation: Elective Surgery You Need Like A Hole In The Head, Gennis traces the history of this procedure from the Neolithic period to the present day. Her emphasis on its non-medical contemporary practice compels us, her readers, to think of trepanation as more than trivial ancient history.

Lastly, Gennis draws stories that give the worlds of medicine and health personal immediacy with her autopathographic comics. In Urine: The Miracle Cure, done for The Nib, she drinks her own urine(!) to explore a popular health myth/wisdom (you decide). It is hilarious and once again, I really appreciate her simpler style and appropriate coloring. The same goes for her tumblr strip about her cat’s cancer, but in that case it’s heart breaking.    

-KW

[somatographics-blog]

While Painless Parker gets a lot of flack for his Barnumesque tactics, he did make the point that dentistry was something poor folks should have access to. 

-AT

[somatographics-blog]

“The Gout” drawn by James Gillray in 1799. Pain represented by a blue demon. I wonder how Gillray would represent pain if he were drawing today? For more on gout, try this.  Gillray drew many knee-slappingly-funny graphic representations of disease, medicine, and science. Like what? “The Cow-Pock -or- the Wonderful Effects of the New Inoculation!-” comes to mind. Edward Jenner wasn’t the first person to investigate and suggest that inoculating people with cowpox could more safely prevent smallpox, but he gets most of the credit. More about Gillray try this. More about Jenner and smallpox try this.    -KW