Graphic Medicine 2026: Baltimore!

While many of my cartooning colleagues gathered this weekend in San Diego for Comic-Con International, I was across the country in Baltimore for the 2026 Graphic Medicine Conference. Although I love Comic-Con, I think I got the better end of the deal. 

Graphic medicine is a field of medical humanities where comics intersect healthcare. It’s a big field, from public health to journalism to narratives like my book, Mom's Cancer. It brought close to 200 doctors, nurses, academics, librarians, cartoonists and others to Baltimore to share projects, research, results, stories and ideas.

I signed up for the conference too late to join any panels or workshops, and wasn’t sure I wanted to spend the time and money to fly across the country without a real reason to. Karen convinced me I didn’t need any more reason than wanting to hang out with my friends. “Life's too short. Just go.” 

It was the right call. I did hang out with my friends and also made some new ones. I saw interesting new creative work and am taking home a load of inspiration (and books). I managed to participate in many other ways than sitting on a panel, both within sessions and the perhaps-more-important time outside of them. 

I was also gratified to see that Mom's Cancer is still very relevant and useful to people working in the field, which is nice to know as we release its 20th anniversary edition. Graphic medicine people are the best. 

Photo dump ahoy. Apologies for the high percentage of selfies.

Most of the conference happened on the Johns Hopkins University's Homewood Campus, though we also ventured across town to the famous hospital. I don't know how many campuses Johns Hopkins has in Baltimore--seems like a dozen. This town is peppered with Johns Hopkinses.

A beautiful campus of Federalist-style brick buildings and grassy quads. Because it's summer the campus was pretty dead, except for knots of touring high school students. As I remark every time I travel east, brick architecture enchants me because we have very little of it in northern California. Ours all fell down in 1906.

At the Thursday night reception/social hour with keynote speaker Dr. Nathan Gray and graphic medicine champion Dr. Brian Callendar. Can't swing a dead cat without hitting a doctor.

Also at the reception, I connected with my friend Maia Kobabe, author of the most-banned book in America GenderQueer, and Maia’s collaborator on their new book Breathe, Sarah Peitzmeier. Sarah is the Ph.D. kind of doctor. There were a lot of them, too.

Dr. Nathan Gray gave the opening keynote talk on Friday. He wrote and drew a graphic novel titled The Human Remains (it's a tricky title with multiple meanings) that will be released in November but I have had the pleasure of reading (and blurbing) it already. I think it's a terrific book and Nathan was an excellent speaker about his own experience as a comics-creating physician.

Harvard medical librarian Matthew Noe, cartoonist Ellen Forney (Marbles), and Dr. Michael Green, who's been at the heart of graphic medicine since its beginning. I'd asked them if I could take their picture and they were winding up to pose when I snapped this one, which I thought had a lot more life and personality than the stiffer portrait that followed. Hope they forgive me.

A large atrium space was dedicated to vendors, including my friend, RN, and graphic medicine co-originator MK Czerwiec. Her excellent book Taking Turns is an oral history in comics form of her tenure on an AIDS ward in the 1990s, while her new book, LB & Me, is about her creative connection to cartoonist Lynda Barry. MK also won an Eisner Award for her editorship of the book "Menopause," and did me the favor of writing a new Introduction for the 20th anniversary edition of Mom's Cancer.

Friday night ended with an opera recital inspired by Dana Walrath's graphic novel about her mother's experience with Alzheimer's Disease, Aliceheimers. Dana wrote the libretto; that's her at the music stand, narrating. Music was performed by a pianist, who's obscured by the piano, and a very talented soprano. If I had their names handy I'd give 'em. The performance was held in an auditorium in the hospital that was originally an anatomy theater, with medical students in steeply banked pews looking down at human autopsies. I think the setting enhanced the haunting themes of Dana's opera.

A selfie at one of the sessions on Saturday: Dr. (MD) Alex Thomas, Dr. (Ph.D.) Meredith Li-Vollmer, cartoonist Ellen Forney, and me. You may not know their names but trust me: this is a murderer's row of prodigious graphic medicine work and talent that, in their own ways, have made big differences in a lot of lives. Meredith, who works for Seattle and King County Public Health, gave an excellent day-two keynote. 

Saturday included this panel about the new book Keywords/Keyimages in Graphic Medicine, to which I and 40-some other people contributed essays. Left to right are editors Lisa Diedrich and Briana Martino, then contributors Anna Mukamal, Paul Flippen, A. David Lewis, Maia Kobabe, MK Czerwiec, and Ebru Ustundag. They actually invited me to join the panel before it began but I declined, both because I was unprepared and knew from experience that eight people on one panel was WAY more than enough. It went very well, and I had a chance to say a bit at the end. It's a neat academic book on how graphic medicine works formally, along the lines of Scott McCloud's analysis of comics.

Fulbright scholar Maria Jose Mompeán Mejías came from Spain to study graphic medicine in the U.S. for a year, and is heading back home right about now. Photo by Brian Callendar; Dr. (Ph.D.) A. David Lewis provided the photobomb. Maria Jose said very nice things about Mom's Cancer, which was great but didn't quite register until I sat in on her talk....

....which contained a generous portion of Mom's Cancer. In this photo, I think she's looking over at me to see how I felt about what she was saying. I felt great. She's brilliant. 

I did have a rare "Marshall MacLuhan in Annie Hall" moment on Saturday. I was watching a panel when, during Q&A, one of the speakers referenced a bit from Mom's Cancer. Because it was unplanned and off the top of his head, he didn't quite remember it right. I caught moderator MK Czerwiec's eye; she read my mind and handed me the mic.

"Coincidentally," I said, "I wrote that book you're talking about..." which got a laugh in the room. The speaker had no idea I was there, of course, and he and I had a nice exchange both then and afterward.

The conference ended Saturday night with an event at Red Emma's bookstore and coffeehouse, a Baltimore institution of heroic free expression and literature. This is the bookstore portion of the building....

...and this is the restaurant/bar/coffee house portion, which was huge. Graphic medicine folks took over more than half of it. At left in this photo is a group interview of people who have new books out, available for sale and signing at the counter.

I didn't have much time for sightseeing but did get to the Edgar Allan Poe House and Museum the afternoon of my first day in town. Perhaps fittingly, it is a strange little museum. It's a tiny house with tiny rooms, and you have to reserve a timed ticket because the whole thing can hold maybe a dozen visitors at once. I enjoyed it but would only recommend it for a dedicated Poe fan.

Baltimore's harbor was lovely. In particular, it hosts several historic ships, including a submarine, the last surviving ship from the Pearl Harbor attack, and the sail-powered sloop USS Constellation. I didn't have time to explore them, but it would be a top priority on my next visit.

Thanks and farewell, Graphic Medicine 2026. We'll meet again.

250 Words on Notable Quotables

[I try to start my day writing 250 words on anything. I’ll post one every Tuesday until I run out of good ones.]

Sometimes a particularly memorable quotation makes its way into everyday conversation. Mine come from TV and movies rather than literary classics because I’m bourgeois. Some favorites I actually use:

“Everybody remember where we parked,” said by Captain Kirk (William Shatner) in Star Trek 4: The Voyage Home. It’s both a sensible thing for a parent to say in a parking lot and for a Starfleet captain to tell his crew when disembarking from an invisible time-traveling spaceship in 1986 San Francisco. 

“Important safety tip, thanks Egon,” said by Venkman (Bill Murray) in Ghostbusters after Egon (Harold Ramis) warns that they might disintegrate themselves. Useful for both dire and trivial hazards.

“I’ll alert the media,” said by the stuffy butler Hobson (John Gielgud) to his man-child employer Arthur (Dudley Moore) in the eponymous movie, after Arthur announces his plan to take a bath. Distilled sarcasm for any occasion. 

“Think you used enough dynamite there, Butch?” –Robert Redford, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

 “A man’s got to know his limitations.” –Clint Eastwood, Magnum Force.

“Have fun storming the castle!”—Billy Crystal, The Princess Bride.

“You sit on a throne of lies!” –Will Ferrell, Elf.

 “Hang onto your wigs and keys.” –David Letterman.

“You knew the job was dangerous when you took it.” –Super Chicken.

A good quotation can delight listeners when they get the reference and mystify them when they don’t. The challenge of working one into a conversation is that it’s hard. If it wasn’t hard, everyone would do it. 

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Tribble Couture

 

One of my favorite humor writers, Merrill Markoe, posts a Substack newsletter, one of the recurring features of which is "Who Wore It Best?" that compares the latest fashion designs to more prosaic inspirations. It's always fun but I had to share this one in particular just to preserve it for myself. HA!

This is a cosplayer I photographed at the Denver Pop Culture Con in 2019. I pretty much laughed myself sick when I saw it, and despite all the screen-accurate Iron Man and 12-foot-tall Galactus constructs I've seen since, I think it remains my favorite costume ever. If recent fashion trends are an indicator, this cosplayer was years ahead of her time.

250 Words on Criticism & Editing

[I try to start my day writing 250 words on anything. I’ll post one every Tuesday until I run out of good ones.]

One of my breakthroughs in becoming a professional writer, back when I was a cub reporter, was learning to not take criticism personally. The closer your art is to your heart, the harder it is to stand by while a colleague or editor rips into it, but sometimes that’s the job. 

My advice: don’t react right away. Sit with it a while. If it’s from someone you respect or in a position to pay you, consider the possibility that they’re right.

Here are some things NOT to say:

“I meant to do that.”

“You’re not reading it right.”

“It’s not finished yet.”

“It’s not my good stuff.”

I understand the defensive impulse to pre-emptively disparage yourself before your reader can. Beat them to the punch. But if your work’s not clear, not finished, or not your good stuff, why are you wasting their time with it? Show them nothing but your best and have the confidence to stand behind it! 

If someone does you the favor of giving feedback on your work, shut up and listen. Don’t explain, make excuses, or argue with them. If two or more people get hung up on the same point, they’re right, you’re wrong, and you have to fix it. 

When my book editor at Abrams, Charlie Kochman, has a question about my work, we talk it over but he always leaves the solution up to me. He makes me better without leaving fingerprints. I think that’s a gift that all good editors share. 

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The Kohoutek Effect

A front-page article in my hometown paper today, written by a reporter from the Sacramento Bee paraphrasing another article from Forbes, describes the cosmic wonders readers can look out for in July. 

For example, did you know that the Milky Way will be visible in July? And that the sky will be dark, and the Moon "largely invisible to the naked eye"? Also, a comet will pass by Earth on Tuesday, and in late July you'll be able to spot Saturn's rings through a telescope.

I won't embarrass the reporter by naming them, but I can only imagine them sitting in high school science class whining, "But when will I ever use any of this stuff in real life?!" Today is that day.

The article contains kernels of truth but they're garbled into incomprehensibility. 

The Milky Way is visible year-round. The kernel of truth is that the summer is a nice time to see its bright core, but there's nothing special about July. Just get far away from city lights and look up.

The July sky will be as dark as usual and the Moon will be as visible as ever. The kernel of truth is that the next full Moon will happen toward the end of the month, on July 29. That is not newsworthy.

The comet, named "10P/Tempel 2," is passing closer than usual to Earth but will still be tens of millions of miles away and invisible to the naked eye. 

Saturn's rings are visible through a telescope anytime Saturn is up, which it will be all summer and into the fall. The visibility of the rings varies as we see the planet from different angles in its orbit, and on rare occasions they seem to disappear when we view them edge-on, but they will look very impressive for several years to come. 

I think articles like this do real harm, and not just the pain they cause me when my eyes roll too far back into my head. People who read this will go out expecting to see these marvels and be disappointed. Their trust in mass media will erode (appropriately, in this case) and their interest in stargazing will plummet.

Which is too bad, because there are infinite marvels to be seen when you know where, when, and how to look, and have a trustworthy guide.

(This post's title, "The Kohoutek Effect," comes from my astronomer friend Sherwood Harrington, who remembers the widespread disappointment in the 1970s when the "Comet of the Century!" turned out to be something of a dud. I remember!)

250 Words on Adulting

[I try to start my day writing 250 words on anything. I’ll post one every Tuesday until I run out of good ones.]

“Adulting” is a newish word for an ancient concept: growing up, shouldering responsibility, making your way in the world. Most of us ease into it, some have it thrust upon us, others never get the hang of it. 

I notched an adulting milestone one night my car broke down as I was driving back to college. In those pre-cell-phone days, I found a house that would answer a stranger’s knock after dark and called my Dad.

“Well, you have AAA,” he said. “Take care of it.”

I don’t know what I expected him to do, but his unwillingness to charge to my rescue was a shock! Then I took care of it. I don’t actually remember how I solved the problem; probably had the car towed to a mechanic. What I never forgot is that it was my problem to solve, and I did.

Similar rites of passage might be taking out your first loan, making your first major purchase, deciding on a big move, accepting or leaving a job. As my daughters grew into women, I saw how difficult adulting could be. They always knew that their mother and I had their backs, but some of my proudest moments as a parent came when they solved a big problem that we only learned about afterward. 

That said, I have my own definition. When the toilet paper roll is down to its last square of tissue and you replace it instead of leaving it for the next person, you’re adulting. 

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PLEASE SUBSCRIBE! I am sharing these little "250 Words On" essays via Substack, which will email a new one to your In Box every Tuesday morning. Just follow this link and enter your email address. It's free, and I promise to never use your address for evil purposes.