March 4, 2010: Part 3: Zines/Comics about Sickness, Health and Medicalization: Funny (Awesome) Misshapen Comics: An interview with Jeffrey Brown

My friend Erin Crickett dropped off My Funny Misshapen Body by Jeffrey Brown with groceries and movies a couple days after I began my official hunt for zines and comics and resources about health, sickness and medicalization. I read the whole thing over two bus trips, to and from the daycare I am doing a placement at.

Jeffrey's comic style is refreshing because it is engaging real life. It is out of order, but thats how we remember things. I also like to include this book in this series in part because it is not just about medicalization and sickness. It is also about other things. And I like that. I mean, I emailed Jeff because I wanted to interview him about Semi Colon, which is the chapter in this book that focuses on Jeff's story of his early years of Crohns, but I like that there are subtler references to his body, his scares and his weight gain and weight loss (resulting from drugs he was on because of the Crohns) in other parts of the book, because it is a story of his life. and i like how all those things are told in the book.

In our interview, Jeff talked about finding a drawing style that fits with the content of having Crohns. Finding a drawing style with more depth than Clumsy, and other previous works. We talked about the seemingly out-of-order-ness of the stories in the book and how we draw memories so that they are accurate to how those memories feel in our brains. Because Jeff's work is so personal, I asked him how he makes sure he is not revealing other people's secrets.

Jeffrey Brown writes comics about love that are more real than TV and film - we talked about that, and we talked about having a kid, and re-arranging his routine and approach to fit in the routine of having a child, and the routine of getting creative work done.

We finished by talking about Jeffrey's new and exciting upcoming projects: Undeleted Scenes and The Incredible Changebots.

check out www.jeffreybrowncomics.com.

Feb 18 2010: Part One of Zines about Sickness, Health, Medicalization: An introduction to good work (zines and a graphic novel)

This week's episode features me talking about three great projects: Funny Misshappen body by Jeffrey Brown, About My Disappearance By David Roche, and If I Can't Dance is it Still My Revolution #3 by A.J. Withers.

Funny Misshappen Body by Jeffrey Brown (to be interviewed in more depth in a future show)
is a grahic novel about art school, growing up and Jeffrey's diagnosis and treatment of Crohnes Disease. In particular, in this episode I talked about Semi Colon, the chapter about Jeffrey Brown's experience with Crohnes Disease. Jeffrey's comic drawing style in this chapter is choppy, beautiful and accurate and illustrates the diorientation, busy, scarey, weird, experiences common to hospitalized and diagnosed situations. I highly recommend it. www.jeffreybrowncomics.com

About My Disappearance (#1) by David Roche is a detailed first person account of having chrones diesease. Tells a very personal, specific, first person story of David's first four months living with Crohnes. About My Disappearance talks about David's diagnosis, pain, disorientation, weight loss, interacting with friends his when suddenly feeling very sick, medicalization, being on new drugs. About My Disappearance (#1, and #2) is distroed by microcosm press. Visit: Microcosm Publishing: http://microcosmpublishing.com/

If I Can't Dance is it Still My Revolution? by A.J. Withers is a zine series that is now (also) a website. This episode I talked about issue #3 of If I Can't Dance is it Still My Revolution? I read from a couple of parts of this zine. A.J is a solid writer about radical disability politics. In #3, A.J writes specific letters to different clinics about specific messed up things that A.J has experienced in various clinics. There are also big essays at the beginning of the zine that are fabulous. Visit A.J's website:http://still.my.revolution.tao.ca