Emi Gennis Comics & Illustration

Emi Gennis makes comics about health and history in a way that draws (ha!) you in with her first panel. This page from The Radium Girls demonstrates the way she places pathology into an “every day” context. This mini is also brilliant for its use of color.

In her story Trepanation: Elective Surgery You Need Like A Hole In The Head, Gennis traces the history of this procedure from the Neolithic period to the present day. Her emphasis on its non-medical contemporary practice compels us, her readers, to think of trepanation as more than trivial ancient history.

Lastly, Gennis draws stories that give the worlds of medicine and health personal immediacy with her autopathographic comics. In Urine: The Miracle Cure, done for The Nib, she drinks her own urine(!) to explore a popular health myth/wisdom (you decide). It is hilarious and once again, I really appreciate her simpler style and appropriate coloring. The same goes for her tumblr strip about her cat’s cancer, but in that case it’s heart breaking.