The Comedy of Cancer

As a survivor of Leukemia, I spent most of my childhood in and out of the hospital. This comic is based off of true stories from my family, I hope to teach other people in a situation similar to mine that when times are difficult, you have to adapt to them. Instead of focusing on the negative times in the hospital, I began focusing on the positive aspects of my life and I hope this project will help other people find the positives in tough times of their life as well. Inspired by the Calvin and Hobbes comics, I chose to convey my story using cartoon characters because I believe this helps the viewers see through a child’s eyes. I believe it allows a tough topic to be conveyed in a comedic voice. Comic books are more relatable to a wider audience, especially children, and images can be communicated across all languages. In the past I have created many posters for nonprofit causes and I attribute that to my time in the hospital. I feel more attached to non-profits and organizations that work towards making a change and I feel this comic book explains and expresses my connection to these other organizations. This project was created in Photoshop where I hand drew and shaded each individual panel. I used Illustrator to color the first panel of every story and I arranged the whole comic using InDesign where I also added the text. I chose to keep the comics in black and white because many newspaper comic strips, manga books and other graphic novels are often illustrated in black and white, but in time I hope to continue this project and colorize all of the panels.