Comics and Mental Health: Call for submissions

[Jill Anderson]

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS
Comics and Mental Health
A special themed edition of Asylum magazine

Comics and graphic novels are currently receiving increased attention in academic disciplines while enjoying widespread acclaim through popular culture. Many of the most acclaimed comics use themes and characters that directly or indirectly touch on mental health in ways that are potentially thoughtful, challenging and provocative but also manipulative, voyeuristic and stereotypical. Key examples are the characters of Delirium and Despair in Neil Gaiman’s Sandman series, and the Joker in Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy of films. At the same time, the rise of media such as web comics, and alternatives to classic comics which incorporate memoir, journalism and social history, indicate the potential of comics and graphic novels to portray lived experience in vivid tones. But does the representation of often deeply personal feelings, both painful and joyous, as expressed by individuals with their own experiences of mental health issues, connect collectively? Can we identify shared themes and concerns in the work of comic artists who are concerned with, or, who have experience of mental health issues?

We invite 500-1000 word contributions to Asylum – The magazine for democratic psychiatry (www.asylumonline.net) that explore the links between mental health and issues of identity in comics and graphic novels.

Submissions may include but are not limited to:
• Personal reflections on your own favourite comic depictions of mental health issues.
• Excerpts from your own comics dealing with mental health issues (1 side of A4 max).
• Reflections on how reading/writing comics has been part of your own experience of dealing with mental health issues.
• Descriptions of aspects of the history of mental health as depicted in comics.
• Consideration of the current role of web comics, for example, in building communities, or increasing awareness of mental health issues.
• Explorations of the way therapy or mental asylums are depicted in comics.
• Discussion of comics which treat mental health (and the 'mad') as a metaphor for aspects of society to be critiqued.
• Reflections on comics which are not about mental health directly, but are concerned with relevant themes: alienation; difference; altered states of consciousness; extremes of behaviour, breaking taboos, etc.
• Consideration of comics which positively explore and celebrate psychological/emotional difference and diversity.

Submissions should be emailed by 31st September 2014 to the Asylum magazine Guest Editors Meg John Barker [e-mail], Caroline Walters [e-mail], Joseph De Lappe [e-mail]. Please include a short biography (50 words).

Please do include images from the comics under discussion only if you can obtain copyright permission or if images are from your own comics. Otherwise just point readers to where they can view the comics.