We briefly featured the life and work Leonard Roy Frank on pages 7–10 of the recent Electroshock issue of the magazine – Asylum 21:3 (2014). Now we are sad to report that his long and principled struggle against the routine abuses of medical psychiatry has come to an end.

If you missed it, we highly recommend that you check out that issue of our magazine, and also the fascinating blogs about LR Frank’s life and work: www.madinamerica.com/2015/01/memoriam-leonard-roy-frank/ There are several other great items of general interest, but this is also the second in the series featuring Comics & Mental Health.

Guest editors Meg John Barker, Joseph De Lappe & Caroline Walters now focus on depictions of depression, anxiety and psychotic experiences. Meg John writes about how drawing comics has helped the artists to understand and express some of their experiences, while Alex Reed considers the resonances of Marvel Comics with the anti-psychiatry movement.

Wendy Couchman presents Cheese or Ham? – a lady with insights on aging, dementia … and crab? Matthew Green interviews Ravi Thornton about her project HOAX, which concerns her brother’s struggle with schizophrenia.

Katherine Hubbard writes about the character of Rorschach in Watchmen, and Sasha Garwood reflects on representations of mental illness in Neil Gaiman’s Sandman series. Finally we have some great work from the comics artist Brick (author of Depresso) and from Simon Wharne and Liz Greenfeld, who are included in every feature this year.

Meg John Barker, Joseph De Lappe & Caroline Walters

Download Volume 22 No 2

Contents

• Special Issue: Comics and Mental health: Part 2
• Introduction by the editors
• Leonard Roy Frank: Obituary extracted from Mad in America
• Drawing Comics and Social Aspects of Mental Health by Meg John Barker
• Ronnie Laing, Jack Kirky and Me: The day the world turned dayglo by Alex Read
• Cheese or Ham? Wendy Couchman, Trish Hafford-Letchfield and Kate Leonard
• Comics, Cross- Media and Mental Health: Matthew Green interviews Ravi Thornton.
• Dreams of the Endless: Despair, delirium and representations of mental health by Sasha Garwood
• After Depresso or How I Learned to Do Something with Being Bonkers by Brick
• A Dog is for Life by Brick
• ‘… Rorschach. He’s sick in his mind.’ by Katharine Hubbard
• The Autistic Rights Movement (ARM UK)
• Validation or Invalidation: To be or not to be? by Mark Bertram
• Supertanker on a Sixpence by Adrian Kenton –
• LETTER: Alec Jenner Remembered by James Stalker
• Depression and Gladness (an anonymous poem)
• Book Review by Jordan Reyes of Better Days: A mental health and recovery workbook by Craig Lewis.
• News and Reports