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Anatomy Comic Strips

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DESCRIPTIVE ARTICLE

Anatomy Comic Strips

Jin Seo Park,1 Dae Hyun Kim,2 Min Suk Chung3*
1
Department of Anatomy, Dongguk University College of Medicine, Gyeongju, Republic of Korea
2
The Lawrenceville School, Lawrenceville, New Jersey
3
Department of Anatomy, Ajou University School of Medicine, Suwon, Republic of Korea

Comics are powerful visual messages that convey immediate visceral meaning in ways
that conventional texts often cannot. This articles authors created comic strips to teach
anatomy more interestingly and effectively. Four-frame comic strips were conceptualized
from a set of anatomy-related humorous stories gathered from the authors collective
imagination. The comics were drawn on paper and then recreated with digital graphics
software. 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 on
the Department of Anatomy homepage at the Ajou University School of Medicine,
Suwon, Republic of Korea. The comic strips were written and drawn by experienced
anatomists, and responses from viewers have generally been favorable. These anatomy
comic strips, designed to help students learn the complexities of anatomy in a straightforward and humorous way, are expected to be improved further by the authors and other
interested anatomists. Anat Sci Educ 00: 000-000. 2011 American Association of Anatomists.
Key words: gross anatomy; artistic anatomy; cartoons; humor; Korea; medical education

INTRODUCTION

Science Comics

The comic medium has largely been ignored in the scientic

disciplines, even as it has begun to appear in the humanities.
For long time, comics have been regarded as suitable only for
children, because they are neither art nor literature but
rather a perverse hybrid arising from popular culture (Locke,
2005; Tatalovic, 2009). And yet comics have enormous
power to tell stories and convey messages (McCloud, 1993).
Comics can also facilitate efcient and effective communication of complex information. They have been used successfully to disseminate ideas, and their audience has expanded
beyond young people to include adults who wish to learn
more about myriad weighty issues in fun ways (Green and
Myers, 2010).

Comics have been used in science education, including chemistry (Di Raddo, 2006) and biochemistry (Nagata, 1999).
One group created a science curriculum that incorporated
comic strips and provided students with opportunities to
read, discuss, and respond to the contents of these comics.
The comic strips stimulated students interest in science issues
and promoted science literacy (Olson, 2008). In another
study, children exposed to science comics were able to give
scientic explanations for the comics based on their own
experiences (Weitkamp and Burnet, 2007). Spurred by curiosity from science comics in yet another study, children were
motivated to look for more information in magazines, newspapers, the Internet, and other sources (Rota and Izquierdo,
2003). Posters that incorporate science-themed comics can
enhance the publics understanding of science across multiple
generations (Naylor and Keogh, 1999).
Contemporary comics depict the lives of scientists in addition to the subject of science itself. One series, PhD Comics,
depicts the lifestyle of graduate students in the midst of their
scientic research (Cham, 2002; PhD Comics, 2011). Lab
Bratz, another comic strip, was inspired by the day-to-day
activities of a scientic laboratory and ofce space (Tatalovic,
2009; Lab Bratz, 2011). Such comics have been used for fun
and education and are increasingly a topic of academic study.

*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 the
National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF), with funding from the
Ministry of Education, Science, and Technology; Grant number:
2010-0009950;
Received 10 October 2010; Revised 28 February 2011; Accepted 11
April 2011.
Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com). DOI
10.1002/ase.224
2011 American Association of Anatomists

Anatomical Sciences Education

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Medical Comics
Medical comics have been used to promote public awareness
and patient literacy regarding various ailments, including
Anat Sci Educ 00:000000 (2011)

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 translated to English.

HIV and diabetes (Harvey, 1997; Pieper and Homobono,

2000). The comic medium is particularly appropriate for educating patients, because visual learning can be intuitive in
ways that verbal explanations may not (Green and Myers,
2010).
Medical comics also benet health care professional trainees. Medical students gain knowledge from comics as well as
empathic, observational, and communication skills. Students
come to regard the patient as a person, much more than a
mere subject with a disease. Along this line, medical comics
are increasingly being used in the medical humanities (Green
and Myers, 2010).
Medikidz (medical information for kids) is a comic book
designed to teach children about common disease processes
(OLuanaigh, 2010). These serial comic books each deal with
one disease, beginning with asthma, breast cancer, and childhood
obesity and continuing on through the alphabet (Medikidz,
2011). The immune system is a dramatic source for comic-type
2

stories (Tatalovic, 2009). One can imagine immunology comics

expanding to animated lms, where immune cells (heroes) battle
against pathogenic microorganisms (villains).

Anatomy Comics
Anatomy has been explored in some comic books, usually
aimed at childrens curiosity about the human body. The
available commercial comics are not ideal, however, because
most cartoonists who write and sketch them have no formal
anatomy training (Hwang et al., 2005). Experienced anatomists might be more likely to describe anatomy simply and
correctly. The process of translating scripts to images is also
crucial, as artists can distort writers visions (Tatalovic,
2009). It is, therefore, desirable that an anatomist simultaneously writes and illustrates the comic strip. The project
described here was these authors attempt to write and illustrate four-frame comics that would help medical students
Park et al.

Figure 2.
The comic strip artist uses himself as the model for the leading character, Dr.
Anatophil.

learn human anatomy. The creation and educational use of

comics is ongoing.

CREATING COMIC STRIPS

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

from the authors and colleagues memories. Story texts were

written in four paragraphs, matching the nal frame count of
each comic strip. The text of each scenario was illustrated
with pencil and paper, and then digitized with Adobe Illustrator CS5 (Adobe Systems Inc., San Jose, CA; Fig. 1), as has
previously been described by our group (Hwang et al., 2005).
To set a light tone and make the comic strips approachable for students, Dr. Anatophil was cast as the main character, a comical anatomy professor. The corresponding author
of this article (M.S.C.) used himself as the model for the protagonist (Fig. 2).
These authors lacked the artistic talent to draw realistic
gures, so we used two-dimensional caricatures in our comics. Despite their simplicity, our illustrations include a great
deal of the anatomical detail that medical students are
required to know. Our past experience of board lecturing
without a digital projector helped in drawing these comics.
Over the last decade, 550 comic strips have been created
in Korean, with anatomical terms also translated to English
according to the Terminologia Anatomica (FCAT, 1998). The
rst 180 comic strips were published in a Korean comic book
(Chung et al., 2006). Some comics were serially published in
a popular health science magazine of Korea (Health Chosun,
2007). Others were occasionally introduced in newspapers
and on television.
Thirteen comic episodes have been fully translated into
English (see Figs. 3 and 4), and the process continues. They
are freely accessible together with all remaining comic strips
in original Korean language on the Ajou University School of
Medicine Department of Anatomy homepage (Anatomy,

Figure 3.
Two representative anatomy comic strips.

Anatomical Sciences Education

MONTH 2011

Figure 4.
A single comic episode.

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

DISCUSSION
Originality of Anatomy Comic Strips
Unlike single-frame cartoons, comics narrate stories through
a sequence of frames, so one might say that cartoons are to
comics as photographs are to lms (Tatalovic, 2009). Comics
require more from their viewer than do lms, however,
because the comic strip reader must reconstruct the story that
occurs among frames. The readers imagination transforms
the physical space among frames into a coherent story. The
reader thus becomes an active participant in the narrative
and often identies him or herself with the drawn characters
(McCloud, 1993; OLuanaigh, 2010).
Our anatomy comic strips are quite different from other
books or comics. Whereas anatomy coloring books are generally comprised of many unrelated, stand-alone plates (Goldberg, 2007; Goldberg and Ouellette, 2010), each of our
comic strips tells one complete story within four frames (Figs.
3 and 4), the typical pattern of such comic strips as PhD
Comics and Lab Bratz (Cham, 2002; Tatalovic, 2009; Lab
Bratz, 2011; PhD Comics, 2011). Our Dr. Anatophil comic
series also differs from other anatomy comic strips in that its
target audience is medical students rather than young children (Tatalovic, 2009; OLuanaigh, 2010; Medikidz, 2011).
Our comics contain more adult humor that may be more
appropriate and interesting to college students.

Application of Anatomy Comic Strips

Many students struggle to learn anatomy, some because of
the large amount of material and others because of the difculties associated with cadaveric dissection. There is no shortage of stories, however, that make learning of anatomic
details more efcient and fun. For example, the median nerve
carries the nickname counting nerve, because it innervates
the palmar surface of the thumb, index nger, and middle nger, which are used to count paper currency. Comic strips
4

potential to tell such stories has been proposed by previous

authors (McDermott, 1989; Pease, 1991; Weitkamp and Burnet, 2007; Olson, 2008).
Comics also foster medical students empathy by offering
insight into different aspects of illness (Delp and Jones, 1996;
Leiner et al., 2004; Green and Myers, 2010). Students may
be able to use comics or jokes to teach their patients about
disease processes in appropriate, uncomplicated terms
Few graduating medical students specialize in anatomical
sciences, often stating that the subject matter seems boring.
Anatomy comic strips such as ours could be a novel tool for
demonstrating the intriguing and worthwhile activities of
anatomists to trainees.
Anatomy comic strips are not without limitations. Some
have argued that providing pictures to learners does them a
disservice, because they are not given a chance to create their
own mental images (Hughes, 2005). With a morphological
science such as anatomy, where spatial relationships are so
important, however, expecting learners to imagine accurate
mental pictures from verbal descriptions alone is unrealistic.
It has also been reported that science comics, with their striking artwork designed to be fun, might misrepresent the actual
science (Tatalovic, 2009). Yet a different study demonstrated
that even children were able to appropriately discern scientic
fact from ction (Rota and Izquierdo, 2003). We believe that
medical students are generally able to comprehend the humor
in our comic strips and, moreover, can learn anatomy from
them.

Future of Anatomy Comic Strips

The authors will continue to draw the Dr. Anatophil comic
strip series and hope to improve the quality of the illustrations and translations. We have a goal of publishing 1,000
Korean comic strips and translating 750 into English. An
exciting possibility would be to convert the comic strips to
other media platforms such as an iPhone App (Apple, Inc.,
Cupertino, CA) or ash animation video.
Objective assessment of how our anatomy comics are perceived by readers and to what degree they aid students learning is important. We plan to conduct a comparison study of
course grades for students with and without exposure to the
Park et al.

Table 1.
Narrative Remarks from Anatomy Comic Strip Readers

Reader
Medical students

Remarks
The comics promoted memorization of
anatomy contents.
I could laugh at the comical situations
only after acquisition of anatomy
knowledge. I recognized how anatomy
enriches me.
The awkward illustrations of
anatomical structures have both merits
and drawbacks. Schematic drawings
are easy to comprehend, but they are
also difcult to apply to the real
features of cadaveric dissection.

Anatomists

I included a couple of comics in the

PowerPoint slides that I show my
students during lecture.

Clinicians

Several comic strips reminded me of

unforgettable medical school
moments.
I found anatomy jokes relevant to my
specialty and use them to relax
patients.

Laypeople

As a child viewing the comic strips, I

could conrm my goal to enter medical
school with a better sense of the real
experiences of that training.
I did not understand the jokes.
Regretfully, I developed negative
opinions toward the perceived
privileges of medical personnel.

Dr. Anatophil comics. Evaluative narrative comments from

readers in different countries would also be worthwhile
(Olson, 2008). A few examples of narrative comments
regarding Dr. Anatophil comic strips are included in Table 1.
Anatomy comic strips are a fun teaching tool that we have
used for several years at our medical school. We hope that
other artists and educators will draw comics and distribute
them freely through the Internet as we do. Competition
among anatomists would lead to higher-quality comics and
better anatomy teaching resources.

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
JIN SEO PARK, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of anatomy
at the Dongguk University College of Medicine, Gyeongju,
Korea. He teaches gross anatomy to undergraduate and graduate medical students.
DAE HYUN KIM is a student in the Lawrenceville
School, Lawrenceville, New Jersey, and an applicant for medical school. He translates the anatomy comic strips from Korean to English.

Anatomical Sciences Education

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MIN SUK CHUNG, M.D., Ph.D., is a professor in the

Department of Anatomy, Ajou University School of Medicine,
Suwon, Korea. He teaches anatomy by drawing comics on
the board.
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