‘As the reader witnesses the character’s learning, they are learning as well’: talking comics, graphic medicine, and menopause with M.K. Czerwiec

M.K. Czerwiec, a.k.a. comic nurse, is one of the founding members of the graphic medicine movement which meshes the concerns of comics and healthcare. Czerwiec combines her experience as a healthcare practitioner and her fascination for the visual aesthetics of comics in exploring the representations of health and illness in graphic medicine. In this interview, Czerwiec elaborates on the significance of her Eisner award-winning comics anthology, <i>Menopause: A Comic Treatment</i> (2020), in foregrounding the complexities of women’s lived experience of menopause and its attendant physical/psychic challenges. Czerwiec’s observations illustrate the cultural power of graphic medicine to offer visibility and intelligibility to women’s lived perspectives on menopause. Additionally, the conversation addresses Czerwiec’s creative involvement with the field of graphic medicine, her perspectives on comic art and creativity, and graphic medicine’s future as an interdisciplinary enterprise.