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Comics about chest binding, bipolar disorder, and sight loss were named winners at the 2025 Graphic Medicine Awards. The awards took place via a livestream by the Graphic Medicine International Collective on July 19.
This year the Graphic Medicine Awards comprised three categories. The winning titles were Boum‘s The Jellyfish (Pow Pow) for Best Long Form Comic; Sunflowers, by Keezy Young (Silver Sprocket) for Best Short Form Comic; and Breathe: Journeys to Healthy Binding, by Maia Kobabe and Dr. Sarah Peitzmeier (Penguin Random House) in the newly introduced Best Educational Comic category.
Each Graphic Medicine Award winner receives $600 and a commemorative trophy. Designed as a means to promote the use of comics in health understanding and healthcare, the work of the Graphic Medicine International Collective – of which the awards are part – is supported entirely by donations. The Awards have annually taken place since 2022.
The Graphic Medicine Awards use a two stage system for judging finalists and winning titles. The deciding judges for 2025’s winners were Matthew Noe, Janet Chan, Michael Green, Alice Scavarda, Tahneer Oksman, AnneMarie Jutel, Marianne Petit, Teresa Wong.
Best Long Form Comic The Jellyfish by Canadian artist and animator Boum (Samantha Leriche-Gionet) is a fictionalised account of the experience of vision loss that the author similarly went through. GMIC reviewer Martha Cornog described the book as “a poignant portrayal that entertains while eliciting empathy from the reader”.
Adding:
“Boum’s art shines, resembling Japanese manga in the delicacy of line, endearing yet serious characters, and subtle black/greyscale hues. Background elements like eye exam equipment appear in exquisite detail, conveying their seriousness and import. The realistic Montreal setting gives substance to the story in a way that makes Odette’s “jellyfish” all the odder.”
Originally published in the French language by Pow Pow Press as La méduse in 2022, The Jellyfish had already garnered a succession of award nominations and wins before its English language release in 2024 (translated by Robin Lang and Helge Dascher) from the same publisher. This new win will complement its Doug Wright Award received last month.
The Short Form Graphic Medicine Award winner Sunflowers is Keezy Young’s personal exploration of bipolar (I) disorder through autobio comics. Published by Silver Sprocket, the book is also a nominee in next weekend’s Eisner Awards.
Talking about the book in a review, GMIC’s Shelley Wall said:
“Sunflowers, at the outset of the work, are associated with the amped-up emotions of mania; by the end of the work, they seem to represent, instead, the act of opening up, of sharing a troubled aspect of personal history in an attempt to connect with other people”
Maia Kobabe and Dr. Sarah Peitzmeier’s collection of diverse transgender and gender nonbinary experiences with chest binding, Breathe: Journeys to Healthy Binding (Penguin Random House), is the first winner of the new Best Educational Comic category. The book is described as a guide for safe binding practices, and GMIC reviewer A. David Lewis said about the book:
“Featuring respondents from a number of cultural and ethnic backgrounds, Breathe prioritizes personal health and self-acceptance above all, drawing from Peitzmeier’s own work as a social epidemiologist focusing on marginalized populations.”
Graphic Medicine Award for Best Long Form Comic
- WINNER: The Jellyfish, by Boum; translated from French by Robin Lang and Helge Dascher (Pow Pow Press)
- Bald, by Tereza Čechová & Štěpánka Jislová; translated from Czech Martha Kuhlman and Tereza Čechová (Graphic Mundi)
- here I am, I am me – An Illustrated Guide to Mental Health, by Cara Bean (Workman Publishing)
- The Heart That Fed: A Father, a Son, and the Long Shadow of War, by Carl Sciacchitano (Gallery 13)
Graphic Medicine Award for Best Short Form Comic
- WINNER: Sunflowers, by Keezy Young (Silver Sprocket)
- Closing the gap: How a church-hospital intervention on Chicago’s West Side is aiming to reduce hypertension, by Josh Neufeld (The Journalist’s Resource and Chicago Sun-Times)
- I Now Pronounce You Dead, by Ryan Montoya (Boston Congress of Public Health Review)
- True Stories from an ICU [3 comics — The Sisters, Recovery and Decline, and Calluses], by Ernesto Barbieri, Jess Ruliffson, Heather Hopp-Bruce, Marjorie Pritchard, Jim Dao (Boston Globe)
- Uprooted: Voices of Student Homelessness, by Ashley Robin Franklin, Alexandra E. Pavlakis, Meredith P. Richards, J. Kessa Roberts, Kacy McKinney (Southern Methodist University)
Graphic Medicine Award for Best Educational Comic
- WINNER: Breathe: Journeys to Healthy Binding, by Maia Kobabe and Dr. Sarah Peitzmeier (Penguin Random House)
- Abortion Pill Zine: A Community Guide to Misoprostol and Mifepristone, by Isabella Rotman, Sage Coffey, & Marnie Galloway (Silver Sprocket)
- Explain Cancer to Me: A Comic to Answer Common Questions about Cancer, by Julia Shangguan, Kathryn West & Jane Kollmer (University of Chicago Medicine) — 14 page digital zine
- Gendered bodies: A graphic medicine commentary, by KC Barry Councilor and Ann E. Fink (Social Science and Medicine Journal)
- Let’s Talk About the HPV Vaccine!, by Beatrice Katsnelson, Ahmed Elzamzami, Caroline Valdez, Annika Mengwall, Michael Weinstock, Sarah Maurrasse, Sam Schild, Erik Waldman, Avanti Verma (Yale University School of Medicine)
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