Beyond the Personal: The Systemic Critique of German Graphic Medicine

Auto/biographical narratives and the authority of lived experience have shaped the field of graphic medicine and the focus of related scholarship. Following a brief introduction to the growing and diversifying field of German-language graphic medicine, this article puts an emphasis on the analysis of two fictional examples of the genre, comparing Elke Renate Steiner's Risiken und Nebenwirkungen (2010), which deals with the widespread misuse of prescription drugs, and Marijpol's Eremit (2013), which envisions a world in which children are a rarity and the elderly plan their deaths proactively, booking themselves on final journeys. These two comics could not be more different in their story or plot, tone, or style yet turn out to share common ground in their politics as they tackle similar social justice themes (such as the effect of contemporary working conditions on people's health, dignity in aging and dying, and the commodification of care work). The aim of the article is to highlight the socio-critical dimensions that fictional graphic medicine, too, possesses and to begin exploring the particular means it has to speak beyond the personal, proffering systemic critique.