The Bad Doctor just might change the way you read books. You can order it here. |
Ian Williams is a medical
doctor, but also a cartoonist. I learned about his graphic novel, The Bad
Doctor, from a tweet (another excellent reason to get on twitter – it turns up
some absolute gems). The book is about the troubled Dr Iwan James, a general practitioner
who deals with everyone from incontinent old ladies to potentially psychopathic
loners. We follow Dr James, the blurb said, “as he tries to do his best in a
world of limited time and budgetary constraints, and in which there are no easy
answers”.
Well if that doesn’t sound
like your average veterinary career, I don’t know what does!!!
I read further. “Iwan’s
cycling trips with his friend Arthur provide some welcome relief, but even the
landscape is imbued with his patients’ distress. As we explore the phantoms
from Iwan’s past, we too begin to feel compassion for The Bad Doctor, and ask
what is the dividing line between patient and provider?”
Naturally I ordered it
immediately, staked out the postie daily (truth be told, my postie is used to
this) and pounced on the book when it arrived. The great thing is this is not
just a book, it is a graphic novel, or comic. But instead of being about some
dude in a purple suit branding baddies with a skeleton ring, it’s about one of
us.
Dr Williams made time for
a skype interview with SAT so we could probe him further.
Cartoonist and doctor Ian Williams. |
Can you tell us a bit
about yourself?
I am a cartoonist and a doctor.
I studied medicine and qualified in 1989, and worked as a GP in North Wales,
right out in the countryside, surrounded by agriculture and farm animals, for
about twenty years. I was always into art and painting, and after medical
school I did a post-grad certificate in fine art at Chester University and
developed a side career as a painter and printmaker. I had solo exhibitions in
galleries and sold over two hundred and fifty paintings and prints, but I
wasn’t entirely comfortable. The language of fine art is very theoretical and
different from the language of medicine which is very pragmatic. I did an MA in
medical humanities to try to link the two sides of my career.
I was always into graphic
novels and comics and I set up the website graphicmedicine.org
which looked at the intersection between the medium of comics and the discourse
of medicine. After writing about comics, at some stage I thought “ooh, I could
do that” which is a very doctor thing to think. I gave up general practice for
about three years [to focus on art] then worked in sexual health to pay the
bills. Then I moved to Brighton, and fell into a general practice job just across
the road from my flat. I am now working as a GP for two days a week. In the
brief time I gave up medicine I spent all the time in my studio and kind of got
cabin fever, so I think that seeing patients is actually quite therapeutic for
me.
What drew you into
medicine in the first place?
I was really idealistic
when I was young and wanted to do some good and always had slightly left-wing,
anti-capitalist leanings, hating the thought of being ‘in business’ and making
money for the sake of it. I know that medicine is a business, but it seemed a
more noble calling. I was also influenced by TV programs. We had all these
medical dramas and sit-coms on TV, one was called Doctor on the Go. It was
about medical students having wild adventures, and I thought ‘I’d like a bit of
that’.
How did you become
involved in graphic medicine?
Me and a few colleagues
really started the thing off and it has been gradually gaining momentum. I
coined the term when I set up the website. As soon as I launched the site,
people from all over the world started contacting me. It changed my life, quite
literally. I organised the first international conference. We got together in
London in 2010 and people came from The States, Canada, Japan, and The
Caribbean. Since then we’ve had conferences in Chicago, Toronto, Brighton and we
just had a conference at John’s Hopkins University at Baltimore,
which is quite a coup. Medical academics are taking us seriously and people who
wouldn’t have previously looked at graphic novels or literature are
understanding what they are about. We’ve had a couple of delegates from
Australia, and MK
Czerwiec (with whom I run the website) have been invited to Melbourne
as visiting scholars. We are hoping that that will happen in 2015 or 2016.
A scene from The Bad Doctor. We couldn't help but notice animals feature prominently... |
Many people struggle to be
left brain and right brain, but you manage to juggle a career as a doctor,
cartoonist, print maker and writer. Is it tough?
No. Well, I think I struggled
a bit at first but not now. When I was doing painting and print-making, which was
very abstract, I found it hard to talk to doctors about the paintings and where
they came from. If you resort to artspeak you can sound like a complete dork. But
comics have a kind of universal appeal and cross loads of barriers. Everybody
can understand them because they read them as a kid. They are so self
reflective, and ironic, and anarchic and irreverent, and you can say anything
you want in comics and people can understand it,maybe because it’s a hybrid
between words and images. This is where I found my voice.
Critics have praised your
portrayal of Dr Iwan James, the main character in The Bad Doctor, as an
imperfect human being rather than a God-like doctor. Do you think doctors
suffer from trying to be someone they really can’t be, e.g. God?
Maybe. Part of the
motivation was to relieve doctors of those self-imposed expectations. I’ve
never met a God-like doctor. I know lots of doctors who feel like they can’t
make a mistake, they should know everything – which may be fine if you are a
specialist but as a general practitioner it is impossible. Doctors can also be
quite judgemental, and I don’t really understand that. They get a bit high and
mighty about people who smoke or take drugs or drink, or people who don’t make
it to appointments, and part of that judgement comes from the hassle those
people cause us, but a lot of it is adopted from the media, or from medical
tradition which tends to be very judgemental about certain groups of patients.
These patients become stigmatised and discriminated against, which is, I think,
often unfair. It is usually the underprivileged and the poor who get
stigmatised.
How long did it take to
write and draw?
The whole process was
about two years, but the real hard work was a concentrated year – which got
more and more concentrated. The last six months was solid drawing and revising.
The first year was trying to find the story, trying out what worked. It was a
hell of a lot of work.
Do you have any non-human
companions?
The late Megan Williams. |
I used to have a sheep dog,
Megan, and I was besotted with her,
although she was extremely difficult in character. She died a couple of years
ago. I would really like another dog.
Dave the vet is a friend of The Bad Doctor's Dr James. |
That wasn’t at all conscious
and I was quite delighted when you pointed it out. I was working in a rural
environment where I used to work and it was a cottage surrounded by fields. The
neighbours were farmers so out the front were prize-winning cattle and sheep. I
also used to like it when I would visit a patient and they had dogs. It was
like a little bonus when you visited someone and they had a nice pet.
"It was like a little bonus when you visited someone and they had a nice pet". |
My own
dog was a reject farm dog who was probably quite inbred, possibly brain damaged
and verging on unmanageable. We had people who tried to train her but they gave
up. It was like living with someone you really love and adore who causes a lot
of hassle and trouble. I’ve always loved animals.
Animals are so important
in comics. There is a real anthropomorphic tradition. Bryan Talbot,
a well-known comic artist and graphic novelist, talks a lot about this
tradition and why people do it. Art Spiegelman has talked widely about why he
used animals in Maus. Using animals allowed him to subvert expectations and the
iconography of the holocaust, but also
tell the story without worrying too much about visual accuracy, and also
permits a bit of distancing and layering of reality.
Thanks Ian. For readers
who are interested in exploring the genre of graphic medicine, The Bad Doctor is
the perfect place to start. But via Ian’s graphic medicine website I also came
across:
The Epileptic by David B.
(What a fascinating insight into one family’s struggle with a devastating
illness, and some really terrifying traditional and alternative medicine).
Cancer Vixen (a comic
about “kicking cancer’s butt” by a New York socialite – but also a brilliant
perspective on being diagnosed with and enduring treatment of the disease we
all fear).
The Complete Maus (This
was the hardest but in some ways most rewarding of the books to read but isn’t
a lightweight. In fact I had several very sleepless nights thanks to this book,
which retells the story of the holocaust from the point of view of cartoonist
Art Spiegelman’s father).