Life and death is big business, after all. As someone who has long found autobiographical comics to be rewarding on any number of levels, some of these books feel like a distressingly cynical way to make money on the part of the publishers. I'll rattle off a few titles in this vein: Cancer Vixen, Stitches, The Impostor's Daughter (perhaps the most egregiously manipulative example of this sub-genre). An alarming number of them have come from first-time long-form cartoonists and are aimed squarely at the sort of mainstream reader who enjoys this sort of confessional, miserabilist but ultimately triumphant story about tragedy and unfortunate circumstances. A cynic might say that many of them derive their hook from being about death, illness, abuse, tragedy, etc. A lot of "graphic novels" coming out from major publishers these days really seem to be variations on the graphic memoir.
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