Marvel’s newest superhero doesn’t have any superpowers, and she sure doesn’t wear a cape. In collaboration with ABC News, Marvel has used the stories of a real woman to create Madaya Mom, a Syrian mother fighting to keep her family safe. This is part of a growing trend of comics focused on
real world issues.
Since Maus, which was the first graphic novel to win a Pulitzer Prize (1992), other cartoonists have used drawings to raise awareness about past and current international humanitarian issues. Joe Sacco is most known for his work on conflicts, including Palestine and Footnotes in Gaza, both focusing on Israeli-Palestinian relations, and Safe Area Goražde and The Fixer on the Bosnian War. For all of these
Benjamin Dix was inspired by both Sacco and Spiegelman to create his collaborative graphic novel, The Vanni, which is on the 25-year long Sri Lankan civil war. While working as a United Nations communications director in Sri Lanka, Dix said he felt a desire to tell the stories of the people he met. “You deal with your privileged space in this world,” he told The Guardian. “It’s the white guys who get in the armoured trucks and drive out wearing bullet-proof vests. You’ve been there four years and made friends and suddenly you’re saying, ‘Good luck, guys’ and off you go. I lost 30-odd friends in a matter of months and that changes your perspective on life and your sense of who you are in this world.”
Working with artist Lindsay Pollock, who illustrated his script, Dix focused on the life of a fictionalized family who was displaced by the war and was searching for asylum. The reaction to the novel led to him founding the nonprofit PositiveNegatives in 2012. According to the organization’s website, “approaching subjects like conflict and forced migration through the prism of personal narratives emotionally engages general readers and students alike.” So far, PositiveNegatives has released nine projects ranging from the experiences of Somali communities in Europe to the plight of Syrian refugees.
Later this month, Empathetic Media will release its latest social awareness project Life i
“Graphic journalism is not only an effective way to reach a wider audience by presenting them with a more visually alluring format, but it also has advantages that go beyond the surface: by slowly drawing my interviewee’s likeness and parts of their stories as I talk to them, I can establish a stronger relationship with them, allowing them to see how they will be represented, as well as confirm layouts and environments of the situations they are describing. It also allows those who do not want to appear on camera share their stories while preserving their anonymity.”
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