BIG ANNOUNCEMENT! Mom's Cancer Anniversary Edition

In 2006, Abrams ComicArts published Mom's Cancer, about my mother's treatment for metastatic cancer. The story had already gotten some notice as a webcomic, for which it won an Eisner Award, and it's been in print ever since. The book has had a life I couldn't have imagined when I wrote and drew it, including being taught in medical schools.

To mark its 20th (!) anniversary, Abrams and I are publishing an updated edition with 32 pages of new material. That includes 22 pages of comics that tell the rest of the story after the events of the 2006 book, plus a new foreword by my friend and Graphic Medicine co-founder MK Czerwiec, as well as an author's note with background, sketches, ephemera, and my perspective on "what it all means." We didn't touch the original story, just expanded it to bring it up to the present.

The first page of new material.

If you're familiar with the original book, the new cover looks subtly different. I painted it with watercolors rather than digitally this time, which I think gives it a tad more life. We added the "Eisner" seal. Notably, the spine will be pink cloth instead of navy blue to differentiate it from the original. It echoes the pink that symbolizes women's cancer and the stripes in Mom's shirt. Also, a few years ago, a Brazilian publisher put out a Portuguese edition of Mom's Cancer that had a neon pink cover, and we all looked at it and thought, "Gee, I wouldn't have done that in a thousand years, but it's kinda cool!" So it's also a nod to that.

The very pink cover of the Portuguese translation from a few years ago.

My editor, Charlie Kochman, and I are very proud of this new edition. It was his idea to do it and I'm grateful. I hope/think this will become the definitive version of the story. In my mind, it gives Mom's Cancer the ending it deserved but never really had. 

The 20th anniversary edition of Mom's Cancer will be out in March 2026. We're actually reviewing printer's proofs now. You can find it at the Abrams website and, soon, wherever books are sold. Please patronize your local heroic independent booksellers!

Big thanks to my friends and readers (not to mention my editor and publisher!) for 20-plus years of support! It means everything.