Graphic Medicine Manifesto
A decade ago, Graphic Medicine Manifesto established a bold new framework for understanding the intersection of comics and healthcare. It was a call to action—an invitation to rethink the ways we engage with medicine, illness, disability, and caregiving through the power of visual storytelling. Now, ten years later, this landmark volume returns in a special anniversary edition that expands and reimagines its mission for a new era.
With a new critical preface, this tenth-anniversary edition reflects on Graphic Medicine Manifesto’s legacy and its impact on healthcare, scholarship, and comics. It reaffirms the power of comics to challenge disciplines, amplify marginalized voices, and transform teaching in a range of health fields. Organized into six sections, the introduction explores the manifesto’s origins and ongoing relevance, its role as a radical tool in comics, the power of storytelling in health education, the expanding influence of graphic medicine on disability studies and the humanities, the importance of community and collaboration in breaking disciplinary silos, and the future of the field.
Featuring these newly contextualized insights alongside the original essays and visual narratives by Ian Williams, MK Czerwiec, and other leading practitioners, this new edition reaffirms Graphic Medicine Manifesto as an essential text for scholars, healthcare professionals, creators, and anyone engaging with medicine, illness, and caregiving through the power of comics.
MK Czerwiec is a nurse, cartoonist, and educator. She is the creator of Taking Turns: Stories from HIV/AIDS Care Unit 371 and editor of the two-time Eisner Award–winning Menopause: A Comic Treatment, both published by Graphic Mundi.
Ian Williams is an award-winning comics artist, broadsheet cartoonist, and doctor. He is the creator of the graphic novels The Bad Doctor and The Lady Doctor, both published by Penn State University Press.
Susan Squier is Brill Professor Emerita of English and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Penn State University. She is coeditor of PathoGraphics: Narrative, Aesthetics, Contention, Community, also published by Penn State University Press.
Michael J. Green is a physician, ethicist, researcher, and educator at Penn State College of Medicine.
Kimberly Myers is Professor of Humanities and Medicine and Distinguished Educator at Penn State College of Medicine. She is coauthor of Clinical Ethics: A Graphic Medicine Casebook, also published by Penn State University Press.
Scott T. Smith is Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Penn State University. He is coeditor of Uncanny Bodies: Superhero Comics and Disability, also published by Penn State University Press.