Graphic novels

The picture of health

1. Arthur W. Frank

Things to Do in a Retirement Home Trailer Park … When You're 29 and Unemployed Aneurin Wright Pennsylvania State University Press, 2015. 320 pp.

My Degeneration: A Journey Through Parkinson's Peter Dunlap-Shohl Pennsylvania State University Press, 2015. 106 pp.

1. The reviewer is professor emeritus in the Department of Sociology, University of Calgary, Calgary, AB T2N 1N4, Canada.

1. E-mail: arthurwfrank@gmail.com

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A strained relationship takes on new depth when a son moves in with his ailing father inThings to Do in a Retirement Home Trailer Park.

That a major university press would publish a series of graphic novels may come as a surprise to those who think of these works as comic books on steroids, offering plots about superheroes to younger readers. This image of the graphic novel became definitely outdated in 1986 with the publication of Art Spiegelman's second-generation Holocaust memoir, Maus: A Survivor's Tale. Maus won a Pulitzer Prize, was the subject of a show at New York's Museum of Modern Art, and has been translated into 50 languages. The next most acclaimed graphic novel might be Alison Bechdel's Fun Home, published in 2006, which inspired a musical currently enjoying an extended run on Broadway. Bechdel was a 2014 winner of a MacArthur “Genius” Award./.../