{"id":89764,"date":"2026-03-26T12:50:50","date_gmt":"2026-03-26T16:50:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cas\/?post_type=r_cas_magazine&p=89764"},"modified":"2026-04-15T13:25:49","modified_gmt":"2026-04-15T17:25:49","slug":"what-comic-books-can-teach-us-about-medicine","status":"publish","type":"r_cas_magazine","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cas\/arts-sciences\/article\/what-comic-books-can-teach-us-about-medicine\/","title":{"rendered":"What Comic Books Can Teach Us About Medicine"},"content":{"rendered":"
By Marc Chalufour<\/h6>\n

A. David Lewis didn\u2019t always look for deep meaning in his comic books. As a kid, he just wanted to be transported to the worlds of his favorite toys, like G.I. Joe, Transformers, and He-Man. Gradually, he began to appreciate the medium on new levels. \u201cI was a voracious reader and I credit comics, particularly superhero comics, with giving me my vocabulary,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

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A. David Lewis (GRS\u201912), associate professor of English and Health Humanities, Massachusetts College of Pharmacy & Health Sciences<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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Illustrations by artist Noel Tuazon, courtesy of A. David Lewis.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As an English major at Brandeis University, Lewis (GRS\u201912) began to study comics as works of literature. At Boston University, where he earned a PhD in religion and literature, he considered how they fit into the canon of mythic lore and morality plays. Now, he focuses on graphic medicine\u2014the portrayal of healthcare in comics.<\/p>\n

Lewis<\/span><\/a> is an associate professor of English and health humanities at the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences, where he teaches multiple courses about graphic medicine. In October 2025, he helped to organize the New England Graphic Medicine Summit<\/span><\/a>, a conference for storytellers and healthcare workers. And his new book, <\/span>Body, Soul, and Comics: Graphic Religion and Graphic Medicine<\/span><\/i><\/a> (University Press of Mississippi, 2026), comes out in May.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cMy mom said something great to me once when I was young: \u2018You\u2019re probably training for something that doesn\u2019t exist yet,\u2019\u201d Lewis says. Now, he\u2019s at the vanguard of a growing field.<\/p>\n

Comics that take on serious subjects aren\u2019t new. Martin Luther King, Jr. (GRS\u201955, Hon.\u201959) published a comic in 1957 to publicize the nonviolent activist movement. Art Spiegelman\u2019s Maus: A Survivor\u2019s Tale<\/em> (Pantheon Books, 1991), which tells the story of his family during the Holocaust, was the first graphic novel to receive a Pulitzer Prize.<\/p>\n

\u201cComics are disarming,\u201d Lewis says. \u201cThey work for both high and low literacy\u2014they work for kids and then work in a whole new way for adults.\u201d Telling a Holocaust story from the perspective of mice, as Spiegelman did, opens the door to audiences reluctant\u2014or unable\u2014to read a longform story on the subject. That, he says, makes comics \u201cattractive to big, powerful, even revolutionary messages.\u201d<\/p>\n

When Lewis looks back at some of the superhero comics of his childhood, he sees a subtext that he hadn\u2019t considered. For example, Wolverine, one of Marvel\u2019s X-Men, has mental health issues. \u201cHe\u2019s an amnesiac. He has rage issues. There\u2019s something amazing about a hero who suffered, who didn\u2019t trust his own mind,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

With his new book, Lewis brings together his study of religion and medicine. \u201cI don\u2019t think it was an accident that I shifted to healthcare,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019ve noticed the shared concerns, the shared approaches, the shared questions that they have, and comics are a wonderful space for them to engage each other. The through-line is that both of these fields represent selfhood.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lewis\u2019 most popular course at Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences is Cancer in Comics. For the reading list, he\u2019s able to draw on what has become a rich genre that includes Brian Fies\u2019 Mom\u2019s Cancer<\/em> (Abrams, 2011), about the author and his siblings dealing with their mother\u2019s illness, and Kimiko Does Cancer<\/em> (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2020), author Kimiko Tobimatsu\u2019s story of facing breast cancer as a young, queer woman.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s something about the medium that invites those who don\u2019t have power, those who are marginalized and vulnerable, to express themselves,\u201d Lewis says.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s also evidence that these stories can improve health outcomes. A 2019 study by researchers at Penn State College of Medicine showed that comics\u2014specifically My Degeneration: A Journey Through Parkinson\u2019s<\/em> (Penn State University Press, 2015) by Peter Dunlap-Shohl\u2014increased doctors\u2019 empathy for people with Parkinson\u2019s<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cComics can deliver messages and thoughts and experiences in a mediated way,\u201d Lewis says, \u201cin a way that doesn\u2019t assault the reader, but still can deliver some really hard truths.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Alum A. David Lewis believes in the power of graphic storytelling<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":89779,"template":"","department":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/magazine-articles\/89764"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/magazine-articles"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/r_cas_magazine"}],"version-history":[{"count":35,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/magazine-articles\/89764\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":89954,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/magazine-articles\/89764\/revisions\/89954"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/89779"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=89764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"r_cas_department","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/department?post=89764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}