Illness and (hyper)masculinity in ‘Himm’ comics from the USA

Bibliographic Data

ID12691941
AuthorsPaul Mitchell (0000-0001-6893-0704, Inglés, Universidad Católica de Valencia San Vicente Mártir, Godella, Spain, corresponding author)
Year2023
Volume50
Issue1
Pages30-40
Publication date2023-12-26
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueMedical Humanities (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1468-215X • E-ISSN: 1473-4265
PublisherBMJ (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1136/medhum-2023-012767
PMID38164602
OpenAlexW4390225411
LanguageEN
References cited27

In this essay, I analyse HIMM comics from the USA, a specific textualisation of graphic medicine/pathography that deals with a variety of illness experiences by male cartoonists. It is my contention that, in the existing literature, the motif of masculinity in autobiographical health-related comics is an underdeveloped area of academic enquiry. As a result, my analysis focuses on how three North American men depict ill health in their work in relation to existing sociological understandings of male behaviour. The texts I discuss are John Porcellino's The Hospital Suite (2014), a story about his abdominal tumour; Matt Freedman's exploration of adenoid cystic carcinoma in Relatively Indolent but Relentless (2014); and Peter Dunlap-Shohl's My Degeneration (2015), which discusses the cartoonist's experience of Parkinson's disease. At the same time, I use the concept of hypermasculinity to explore the similar visual and verbal strategies through which these men respond to their physical and emotional suffering. It is my intention to illustrate how HIMM comics provide an important, non-medicalised lens through which clinical practitioners and lay readers alike can better see the subjectivised experience of male illness in the early 21st century. With a focus on the concept of bracketing, the representation of pain and vulnerability, men's loss of self-identity and hardiness, I explore how HIMM comics act as important counter-narratives to biomedical discourse by visualising the phenomenological aspects of men's ill health. In this way, the texts in my analytical corpus offer a valuable gender-oriented understanding of the connection between illnesses and (hyper)masculinity

Art · Comics · Literature · Masculinity · Medical humanities · Medicalization · Narrative · Psychoanalysis · Sociology · Subversion · Comics and Graphic Narratives · Gender Roles and Identity Studies · Gender Studies · Media, Gender, and Advertising · Medicine · Psychology

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