Intro to Comics

Defined by the interplay between sequential images and text to tell a story, comics are a readily identified form of mass communication. Often considered a lowly and unsophisticated medium, comics are in fact a sophisticated and efficient way to express ideas and, when widely disseminated, reflect and shape popular opinions across a broad audience. The power and immediacy of an image to engage a reader and deliver a narrative layered in visual and textual meaning underlies a comic’s wide-ranging ability to inform, entertain, satirize, and critique.

Evolving from serialized prints and shifting from illustrated magazines and newspapers to classic comic books to graphic novels to digital comics, the comics in this exhibition capture how the evolution of printed media alters the form and dissemination of comics but always maintains a focus on health, illness, and medicine. They are snap-shots of patients, providers, and clinical practice that provide visual evidence of illness, the gestures and accouterments of clinical interactions, and the spaces in which they took place. In this regard, comics are historically important reflections of social and cultural beliefs about science and medicine, many of which mirror contemporary discussions during the COVID-19 pandemic. As historical artifacts, these comics attest to ideas and aesthetics shifting across eras and collectively contribute to the visual mosaic of medicine’s history.