In Cultures of Comics Work (2016), Brienza and Johnston argue that comics studies has been driven by the methodologies of literary criticism, producing an unhelpful focus on formalist analysis and comic authorship. They advocate instead analysis of the practices of creating comics: locating the labor, illustrating the workers, and pushing the boundaries of comics studies to include issues of publication, crowdfunding and translation.  

I challenge their view that formalist analysis is incompatible with practice-based analysis, and I argue that a fusion of the two approaches reveals the particular power of graphic medicine. Focusing on several collaborative works of graphic medicine from Berlin, Germany; Glasgow, Scotland; and Melbourne, Australia, I argue that formal analysis of these works reveals a scaled presentation of biological development.  This is what epigeneticist C.H. Waddington called “the biological picture”—the potent core of graphic medicine’s exploration of human health and medical treatment.