DESCRIPTIVE ARTICLE

Anatomy Comic Strips

Jin Seo Park,1 Dae Hyun Kim,2 Min Suk Chung3*1Department of Anatomy, Dongguk University College of Medicine, Gyeongju, Republic of Korea2The Lawrenceville School, Lawrenceville, New Jersey3Department of Anatomy, Ajou University School of Medicine, Suwon, Republic of Korea

Comics are powerful visual messages that convey immediate visceral meaning in waysthat conventional texts often cannot. This article’s authors created comic strips to teachanatomy more interestingly and effectively. Four-frame comic strips were conceptualizedfrom a set of anatomy-related humorous stories gathered from the authors’ collectiveimagination. The comics were drawn on paper and then recreated with digital graphicssoftware. More than 500 comic strips have been drawn and labeled in Korean language,and some of them have been translated into English. All comic strips can be viewed onthe Department of Anatomy homepage at the Ajou University School of Medicine,Suwon, Republic of Korea. The comic strips were written and drawn by experiencedanatomists, and responses from viewers have generally been favorable. These anatomycomic strips, designed to help students learn the complexities of anatomy in a straightfor-ward and humorous way, are expected to be improved further by the authors and otherinterested anatomists. Anat Sci Educ 00: 000-000. © 2011 American Association of Anatomists.

Key words: gross anatomy; artistic anatomy; cartoons; humor; Korea; medical education

INTRODUCTION

The comic medium has largely been ignored in the scientificdisciplines, even as it has begun to appear in the humanities.For long time, comics have been regarded as suitable only forchildren, because they are neither art nor literature butrather a perverse hybrid arising from popular culture (Locke,2005; Tatalovic, 2009). And yet comics have enormouspower to tell stories and convey messages (McCloud, 1993).Comics can also facilitate efficient and effective communica-tion of complex information. They have been used success-fully to disseminate ideas, and their audience has expandedbeyond young people to include adults who wish to learnmore about myriad weighty issues in fun ways (Green andMyers, 2010).

Science Comics

Comics have been used in science education, including chem-istry (Di Raddo, 2006) and biochemistry (Nagata, 1999).One group created a science curriculum that incorporatedcomic strips and provided students with opportunities toread, discuss, and respond to the contents of these comics.The comic strips stimulated students’ interest in science issuesand promoted science literacy (Olson, 2008). In anotherstudy, children exposed to science comics were able to givescientific explanations for the comics based on their ownexperiences (Weitkamp and Burnet, 2007). Spurred by curios-ity from science comics in yet another study, children weremotivated to look for more information in magazines, news-papers, the Internet, and other sources (Rota and Izquierdo,2003). Posters that incorporate science-themed comics canenhance the public’s understanding of science across multiplegenerations (Naylor and Keogh, 1999).

Contemporary comics depict the lives of scientists in addi-tion to the subject of science itself. One series, PhD Comics,depicts the lifestyle of graduate students in the midst of theirscientific research (Cham, 2002; PhD Comics, 2011). LabBratz, another comic strip, was inspired by the day-to-dayactivities of a scientific laboratory and office space (Tatalovic,2009; Lab Bratz, 2011). Such comics have been used for funand education and are increasingly a topic of academic study.

Medical Comics

Medical comics have been used to promote public awarenessand patient literacy regarding various ailments, including

*Correspondence to: Dr. Min Suk Chung, Department of Anatomy,Ajou University School of Medicine, Suwon, Republic of Korea.E-mail: dissect@ajou.ac.kr

Grant sponsor: Basic Science Research Program through theNational Research Foundation of Korea (NRF), with funding from theMinistry of Education, Science, and Technology; Grant number:2010-0009950;

Received 10 October 2010; Revised 28 February 2011; Accepted 11April 2011.

Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com). DOI10.1002/ase.224

© 2011 American Association of Anatomists

Anatomical Sciences Education MONTH 2011 Anat Sci Educ 00:000–000 (2011)

HIV and diabetes (Harvey, 1997; Pieper and Homobono,2000). The comic medium is particularly appropriate for edu-cating patients, because visual learning can be intuitive inways that verbal explanations may not (Green and Myers,2010).

Medical comics also benefit health care professional train-ees. Medical students gain knowledge from comics as well asempathic, observational, and communication skills. Studentscome to regard the patient as a person, much more than amere subject with a disease. Along this line, medical comicsare increasingly being used in the medical humanities (Greenand Myers, 2010).

Medikidz (medical information for kids) is a comic bookdesigned to teach children about common disease processes(O’Luanaigh, 2010). These serial comic books each deal withone disease, beginning with asthma, breast cancer, and childhoodobesity and continuing on through the alphabet (Medikidz,2011). The immune system is a dramatic source for comic-type

stories (Tatalovic, 2009). One can imagine immunology comicsexpanding to animated films, where immune cells (heroes) battleagainst pathogenic microorganisms (villains).

Anatomy Comics

Anatomy has been explored in some comic books, usuallyaimed at children’s curiosity about the human body. Theavailable commercial comics are not ideal, however, becausemost cartoonists who write and sketch them have no formalanatomy training (Hwang et al., 2005). Experienced anato-mists might be more likely to describe anatomy simply andcorrectly. The process of translating scripts to images is alsocrucial, as artists can distort writers’ visions (Tatalovic,2009). It is, therefore, desirable that an anatomist simultane-ously writes and illustrates the comic strip. The projectdescribed here was these authors’ attempt to write and illus-trate four-frame comics that would help medical students

Figure 1.

Drawing steps of a comic strip. (A) Comic strip is drawn on paper; (B) comic strip is digitized with computer graphics software; and (C) Korean captions are trans-lated to English.

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learn human anatomy. The creation and educational use ofcomics is ongoing.

CREATING COMIC STRIPS

Humorous stories related to anatomy and ranging from grossand neuroanatomy to histology to embryology were collected

from the authors’ and colleagues’ memories. Story texts werewritten in four paragraphs, matching the final frame count ofeach comic strip. The text of each scenario was illustratedwith pencil and paper, and then digitized with Adobe Illustra-tor CS5 (Adobe Systems Inc., San Jose, CA; Fig. 1), as haspreviously been described by our group (Hwang et al., 2005).

To set a light tone and make the comic strips approach-able for students, Dr. Anatophil was cast as the main charac-ter, a comical anatomy professor. The corresponding authorof this article (M.S.C.) used himself as the model for the pro-tagonist (Fig. 2).

These authors lacked the artistic talent to draw realisticfigures, so we used two-dimensional caricatures in our com-ics. Despite their simplicity, our illustrations include a greatdeal of the anatomical detail that medical students arerequired to know. Our past experience of board lecturingwithout a digital projector helped in drawing these comics.

Over the last decade, 550 comic strips have been createdin Korean, with anatomical terms also translated to Englishaccording to the Terminologia Anatomica (FCAT, 1998). Thefirst 180 comic strips were published in a Korean comic book(Chung et al., 2006). Some comics were serially published ina popular health science magazine of Korea (Health Chosun,2007). Others were occasionally introduced in newspapersand on television.

Thirteen comic episodes have been fully translated intoEnglish (see Figs. 3 and 4), and the process continues. Theyare freely accessible together with all remaining comic stripsin original Korean language on the Ajou University School ofMedicine Department of Anatomy homepage (Anatomy,

Figure 2.

The comic strip artist uses himself as the model for the leading character, Dr.Anatophil.

Figure 3.

Two representative anatomy comic strips.

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2011). Roughly, a quarter of our comics deal with Korean lan-guage and history that may not be familiar to English-speakingreadership. We do not plan to translate these comics.

DISCUSSION

Originality of Anatomy Comic Strips

Unlike single-frame cartoons, comics narrate stories througha sequence of frames, so one might say that cartoons are tocomics as photographs are to films (Tatalovic, 2009). Comicsrequire more from their viewer than do films, however,because the comic strip reader must reconstruct the story thatoccurs among frames. The reader’s imagination transformsthe physical space among frames into a coherent story. Thereader thus becomes an active participant in the narrativeand often identifies him or herself with the drawn characters(McCloud, 1993; O’Luanaigh, 2010).

Our anatomy comic strips are quite different from otherbooks or comics. Whereas anatomy coloring books are gener-ally comprised of many unrelated, stand-alone plates (Gold-berg, 2007; Goldberg and Ouellette, 2010), each of ourcomic strips tells one complete story within four frames (Figs.3 and 4), the typical pattern of such comic strips as PhDComics and Lab Bratz (Cham, 2002; Tatalovic, 2009; LabBratz, 2011; PhD Comics, 2011). Our Dr. Anatophil comicseries also differs from other anatomy comic strips in that itstarget audience is medical students rather than young chil-dren (Tatalovic, 2009; O’Luanaigh, 2010; Medikidz, 2011).Our comics contain more adult humor that may be moreappropriate and interesting to college students.

Application of Anatomy Comic Strips

Many students struggle to learn anatomy, some because ofthe large amount of material and others because of the diffi-culties associated with cadaveric dissection. There is no short-age of stories, however, that make learning of anatomicdetails more efficient and fun. For example, the median nervecarries the nickname ‘‘counting nerve,’’ because it innervatesthe palmar surface of the thumb, index finger, and middle fin-ger, which are used to count paper currency. Comic strips’

potential to tell such stories has been proposed by previousauthors (McDermott, 1989; Pease, 1991; Weitkamp and Bur-net, 2007; Olson, 2008).

Comics also foster medical students’ empathy by offeringinsight into different aspects of illness (Delp and Jones, 1996;Leiner et al., 2004; Green and Myers, 2010). Students maybe able to use comics or jokes to teach their patients aboutdisease processes in appropriate, uncomplicated terms

Few graduating medical students specialize in anatomicalsciences, often stating that the subject matter seems boring.Anatomy comic strips such as ours could be a novel tool fordemonstrating the intriguing and worthwhile activities ofanatomists to trainees.

Anatomy comic strips are not without limitations. Somehave argued that providing pictures to learners does them adisservice, because they are not given a chance to create theirown mental images (Hughes, 2005). With a morphologicalscience such as anatomy, where spatial relationships are soimportant, however, expecting learners to imagine accuratemental pictures from verbal descriptions alone is unrealistic.It has also been reported that science comics, with their strik-ing artwork designed to be fun, might misrepresent the actualscience (Tatalovic, 2009). Yet a different study demonstratedthat even children were able to appropriately discern scientificfact from fiction (Rota and Izquierdo, 2003). We believe thatmedical students are generally able to comprehend the humorin our comic strips and, moreover, can learn anatomy fromthem.

Future of Anatomy Comic Strips

The authors will continue to draw the Dr. Anatophil comicstrip series and hope to improve the quality of the illustra-tions and translations. We have a goal of publishing 1,000Korean comic strips and translating 750 into English. Anexciting possibility would be to convert the comic strips toother media platforms such as an iPhone App (Apple, Inc.,Cupertino, CA) or flash animation video.

Objective assessment of how our anatomy comics are per-ceived by readers and to what degree they aid students’ learn-ing is important. We plan to conduct a comparison study ofcourse grades for students with and without exposure to the

Figure 4.

A single comic episode.

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Dr. Anatophil comics. Evaluative narrative comments fromreaders in different countries would also be worthwhile(Olson, 2008). A few examples of narrative commentsregarding Dr. Anatophil comic strips are included in Table 1.

Anatomy comic strips are a fun teaching tool that we haveused for several years at our medical school. We hope thatother artists and educators will draw comics and distributethem freely through the Internet as we do. Competitionamong anatomists would lead to higher-quality comics andbetter anatomy teaching resources.

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

JIN SEO PARK, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of anatomyat the Dongguk University College of Medicine, Gyeongju,Korea. He teaches gross anatomy to undergraduate and grad-uate medical students.

DAE HYUN KIM is a student in the LawrencevilleSchool, Lawrenceville, New Jersey, and an applicant for med-ical school. He translates the anatomy comic strips from Ko-rean to English.

MIN SUK CHUNG, M.D., Ph.D., is a professor in theDepartment of Anatomy, Ajou University School of Medicine,Suwon, Korea. He teaches anatomy by drawing comics onthe board.

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Health Chosun. 2007. Diary of Mr. Anatophil. Seoul, Republic of Korea: Cho-sun Media. URL: http://health.chosun.com/cartoon_list.html?catid511J2&pn51[accessed 11 April 2011]

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Table 1.

Narrative Remarks from Anatomy Comic Strip Readers

Reader Remarks

Medical students The comics promoted memorization ofanatomy contents.

I could laugh at the comical situations

only after acquisition of anatomy

knowledge. I recognized how anatomyenriches me.

The awkward illustrations of

anatomical structures have both merits

and drawbacks. Schematic drawingsare easy to comprehend, but they are

also difficult to apply to the real

features of cadaveric dissection.

Anatomists I included a couple of comics in thePowerPoint slides that I show my

students during lecture.

Clinicians Several comic strips reminded me of

unforgettable medical schoolmoments.

I found anatomy jokes relevant to my

specialty and use them to relax

patients.

Laypeople As a child viewing the comic strips, I

could confirm my goal to enter medical

school with a better sense of the realexperiences of that training.

I did not understand the jokes.

Regretfully, I developed negative

opinions toward the perceivedprivileges of medical personnel.

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