Brian Fies, a graphic designer, known for his famous comic of Mom’s Cancer, uses images and words together in order to express his emotional experience of his mother’s cancer. Fies used his comic as a way to cope with the cancer. His personal goal in writing comics is to have words and images dependent on one another, for neither one can survive alone. The comic’s use of words and images illustrates his family drama and conflict, thus allowing there to be a “bigger truth.” The use of the comic was a more affective way of telling his story rather than an elegant one thousand-word essay. He was able to use the comics and create metaphors justifying the current situation. For example he uses the well-known game “operation” as a way to present his mother. She was receiving chemo and tests, much like the patient of “operation” would be played. He made sure he had the right balance of dead seriousness (cancer) with ridiculousness (comic). His comic images signified the experiences in which his mother underwent. In one of his panels he shows his mother in Frankenstein’s laboratory because she said she felt as though she was there when she was in therapy. In this panel, one is able to see the image of the laboratory and then the explanation in the corners describing the problems of radiation. Therefore, the image is dependent upon the words in order to link the two separate ideas together as one. Fies also exemplifies his mother’s experience of balancing medications through an image of her walking on a tight rope. His picture links the comic to his mother’s pains from cancer, and the words in the corner explain the details such as a pulmonary embolism. In conclusion, Fies comics would not exist if there was not a dependence between the words and the images. Both must exist in order for the comic to come full circle.
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