Epileptic 1 Edited by B David. Paris: L’Association, 2002. $24.95 softback, 176pp. ISBN: 2844140858

Graphic novels are usually the premise of teenage boys, mesmerized by impossibly orbicular breasts and bone-cracking punches, living out secret fantasies of patrolling Gotham City from the shadows. David B.'s use of the genre is subtler. Fusing narrative and artistry he has created a manner of storytelling which is at once both elegant and vivacious. Epileptic 1 recaptures David B.'s childhood and adolescent experience of his older brother, Jean-Christophe's epilepsy and its effect on their family. It is ultimately a tale of trauma recounting a family's immersion in a gamut of treatments, none of which appear to reflect any real compassion for those involved. They seek help first from doctors. To illustrate the bemusement felt by the family Jean-Christophe is depicted with his parents in the centre of a ring of men in white coats dancing merrily around them. Seemingly intractable, Jean-Christophe's attacks appear to be complex partial seizures with secondary generalization (though initial elements of the attack sequence suggest that a potential cardiac cause should also have been investigated). He is diagnosed as having epilepsy and given carbamazepine (which worsens his seizures). His parents consult a neuro-psychiatrist whose only justification for the diagnosis is that he is 'a bad boy' (far more 7-year-old boys would have epilepsy if that was all it took to get it!). Understandably dissatisfied with this response his parents—in the midst of the 1960s antipsychiatry movement—take Jean-Christophe to a 'psychopedagogical institute' where he and his brother are taught relaxation and coordination exercises and receive some form of psychological assessment. David B. discovers that his brother's seizures can be brought on by upsetting him and making him anxious (he tests this on him and is horrified when a seizure ensues) which, though a highly astute observation of Jean-Christophe's condition , fails to be made by anyone but his younger brother. Aged 13 and with worsening seizures Jean-Christophe is referred to a neurosurgeon renowned for the precision of his operations who performs a 'gaseous encephalogram' (presumably a mistranslation of pneumoencephalogram) on him and by way of a show-and-tell demonstration informs his parents that surgery is the only possible cure. He concedes that Jean-Christophe will lose his peripheral vision and be paralyzed for 2 days following the operation, which rather undermines his claims of precision and convinces his parents to refuse surgery. (The medical member of this review (TB) wonders exactly what the surgeon was proposing but realizes …