Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: Mis(h)adra
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: http://iasminomarata.com/
CITY: New York
STATE: NY
COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY: American
RESEARCHER NOTES:
LC control no.: no2017134095
LCCN Permalink: https://lccn.loc.gov/no2017134095
HEADING: Ata, Iasmin Omar
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372 __ |a Cartoons and comics
372 __ |a Games |2 lcsh
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670 __ |a Ata, Iasmin Omar. Mis(h)adra, 2017: |b title page (Iasmin Omar Ata) back cover (comics artist; illustrator; game designer)
PERSONAL
Male.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer, artist, graphic novelist, illustrator, and game designer. Artist and illustrator for publishers and organizations such as PEN America, Art Palestine International, CollegeHumor, and Bigmouth Comix.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
Iasmin Omar Ata is a writer, comics artist, and game designer. On the Iasmin Omar Ata Website, he describes himself as “Middle Eastern/Muslim/epileptic” whose art and comics work focuses on dealing with illness, understanding and applying concepts of identity, “dismantling oppressive structures,” and Arab-Islamic futurism.
Mis(h)adra, Ata’s first graphic novel, began as a webcomic. Here, he adapts the episodes to create a full-length story focusing on Isaac, a young man with epilepsy, who struggles to deal with the stigma of the disease, the often unhelpful doctors who treat him, and the difficulties of attending college while also suffering from a neurological disorder. Isaac has had epilepsy for five years, and he has found that his condition makes it difficult to lead a normal life. After missing so much school, his classmates believe he may be on drugs. Family members, teachers, even doctors downplay the severity of his epilepsy.
Perpetually frustrated, Isaac forces himself into as many normal situations as possible, but when he drinks too much at a party, he experiences a severe seizure that results in hospitalization. There he meets Jo, the friend of a friend, who is highly sympathetic to Isaac’s troubles and helps him as much as possible. Even Jo’s kindness, however, may not be enough to give Isaac the boost he needs to deal with an unpredictable and merciless condition.
The title of Ata’s graphic novel is a pun based on the Arabic dialect spoken by Ata and his family. The main meaning of the word is “I can’t,” but another colloquial meaning is “seizure,” he told Annie Mok in an interview in the Comics Journal. The artwork is in the style of Japanese manga, and the stylistic choices reveal a deep understanding of the nature of epilepsy. When a seizure is imminent, Isaac envisions himself surrounded by a swarm of menacing knives, each with one eye, that are inexorably approaching with the intent of “cutting” him with something he cannot control. The seizures often span several pages in the narrative, representing how interminable they can feel to Isaac and to Ata. The portrayal of the seizures themselves is rendered in a chaotic, disjointed, and fragmented art style highlighted by harsh reds, blues, and blacks.
In an interview with Mok, Ata stated that he was intimately familiar with the events he portrays in Mis(h)adra. “Pretty much everything that’s happened in the book, with some exceptions and rearranging has happened to me. This is all sort of a re-versioning and in my own way a processing of these events that have happened to me. Some details are changed, and some characters represent people but aren’t real people in my life, represent concepts and things I’ve interacted with. It’s just in the avatar as Isaac,” he told Mok.
Ata also told Mok that his work on Mis(h)adra also functioned as a way for him to better deal with his own epilepsy. “I need to live with this, and for lack of a better phrase, deal with this in some way, to get into a healthy place. That’s part of why I started making the comic in the first place. Because of Mis(h)adra . . . . if I hadn’t made the comic, I wouldn’t be nearly as functional as I am now. It really was a point of art therapy.”
“The details of Isaac’s illness feel decidedly lived-in, and Isaac’s exhaustion with the struggle required to live his life is palpably, dramatically realized,” commented a Kirkus Reviews writer. “Ata has crafted a revealing work — not revealing of his personal self, to be honest, but revealing of the epileptic experience in terms that someone who has never had anything close to that can begin to understand,” observed John Seven in a review on the website Comics Beat.
BIOCRIT
BOOKS
Ata, Iasmin Omar, Mis(h)adra (graphic novel), Gallery 13 (New York, NY), 2017.
PERIODICALS
Comics Journal, October 3, 2017, Annie Mok, “An Interview with Iasmin Omar Ata.”
Kirkus Reviews, August 15, 2017, review of review of Mis(h)adra.
Publishers Weekly, September 4, 2017, review of Mis(h)adra.
ONLINE
American Microreviews and Interviews, http://www.americanmicroreviews.com/ (May 14, 2018), Britny Brooks, review of Mis(h)adra.
Booklist Reader, https://www.booklistreader.com/ (Oct 21, 2015), Sarah Hunter, review of Mis(h)adra.
Comics Beat, http://www.comicsbeat.com/ (Oct 10, 2017), John Seven, review of Mis(h)adra.
Iasmin Omar Ata Website, http://www.iasminomarata.com (May 14, 2018).
I'm a Middle Eastern / Muslim / epileptic comics artist, game designer, and illustrator who creates art about coping with illness, understanding identity, dismantling oppressive structures, and Arab-Islamic futurism. My comics & games work can be found on this site; I've worked with clients/groups such as PEN America, Art Palestine International, Bigmouth Comix, CollegeHumor, OR Books, and more! I've also been interviewed & reviewed by Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, Electronic Intifada, Library Journal, NPR, and such. I thrive on dedication, dreams, and hard work. Let’s make powerful things together!
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FEATURES
An Interview with Iasmin Omar Ata
BY ANNIE MOK OCT 3, 2017
Iasmin Omar Ata’s debut graphic novel Mis(h)adra, adapted from their webcomic of the same name, follows a young man named Isaac through suffering from epilepsy, dealing with difficult and stigmatizing doctors, and making his way through college. Drawn with bright, poppy colors in a style influenced by Osamu Tezuka and other manga, Ata visualizes epileptic attacks looming as daggers with eyes, unseen to the world around Isaac but all too prominent for him. I spoke to Iasmin over Skype.—Annie Mok
ANNIE MOK: Let’s start with the title Mis(h)adra. Is that how it’s pronounced, with a rolling “r”?
IASMIN OMAR ATA: Pretty much. It’s kind of awkward for non-Arabic speakers to say. I say “mish-ah-dra.” However people can pronounce it is fine by me, because I know it is a little bit awkward. Mishadra in the dialect of Arabic that me and my family speak means “I can’t” or “cannot.”
MOK: What’s that dialect?
ATA: Like, Palestinian, Lebanese Arabic, more of a colloquial… Misadra means “seizure” or “captivation.” Like a triple, cross-language pun [laughs].
MOK: So the story follows Isaac, this young man who’s in college, and you said the story is semi-autobiographical? How would you categorize it as, what’s its relation to your life story?
ATA: It’s very similar. Pretty much everything that’s happened in the book, with some exceptions and rearranging has happened to me. This is all sort of a re-versioning and in my own way a processing of these events that have happened to me. Some details are changed, and some characters represent people but aren’t real people in my life, represent concepts and things I’ve interacted with. It’s just in the avatar as Isaac.
MOK: What was it like to go with Isaac and to kind of repurpose your life into this other purpose.
ATA: I’m not actually very good at talking about myself directly, so it was really hard for me to try and figure out a way to process all this stuff through art. I felt that to have it go through a character who isn’t quite me, is very similar, in that way I was able to distance myself. Get a perspective on events that I was writing, not be 100% in my own head to have a character that was representative of me. Look at things in a new light. That was helpful to recontextualize things I was going through, but also help me get comfortable writing about things that happened to me. Because it wasn’t just my face looking right at the reader, it gave me a safer or more comfortable place.
MOK: In what ways is Isaac different from you?
ATA: Isaac is more me in the past. He started in a place that I was a few years ago, when I really had no idea how to handle my illness. I was just diagnosed awhile before I started [the comic] and I didn’t know how to handle things. He’s different from me in the way that he is more in the past, dealing with things in a different way. At the same time, as I started making the comic, I started to process my illness differently, I started to become more functional, because it was basically art therapy. Isaac at the end of the comic, where he’s like, I accept this and I’m kind of moving on and can deal with my illness, that was where I was at the end of the comic. So in a strange way, he started off different from me, but we grew very similar.
MOK: I wanted to talk about color. The version I have is the advance preview edition in which only the intro is in color, but you use these stark contrasts of very dark pages filled with black ink, or digital ink, I’m not sure how you’re working on these pages?
ATA: Digital. They started off, I pencil manually on pages and then I scan them and do the inks.
MOK: Can you talk about building this contrast between this frightening world of epilepsy attacks that Isaac is getting, and also his day-to-day world where the attacks are looming. What was it like to build these dichotomies of visual languages?
ATA: From the very beginning, it was sort of a long process trying to figure out what the hell the comic was going to look like. I was trying to create a more visceral feeling when you’re looking at Isaac’s life and what he encounters. Rather than being like, “I’m scared” or “I’m very anxious about this,” I wanted it to come across in the fabric of the comic itself without Isaac telling you straight up. That helps people suture into the narrative a bit more. I did a lot of work in the beginning, figuring out, and for me the contrast is important. It looks pretty ordinary, day-to-day, but you have the visualization of the danger of seizures as these brightly-colored daggers. They’re conspicuous, almost in the way. When it comes having a seizure, I wanted the colors to not necessarily be inverted but kind of different. When a seizure’s happening to me, it feels almost like I’m being transported into a different world. There is a huge contrast between your day-to-day and the moment where it’s coming, it’s happening.
MOK: You serialized [online].
ATA: I was basically doing a chapter every month. There were a few small hiatuses, but I put the first chapter online in November 2013, and it ran as a webcomic til fall 2015. I never printed it because as much as I wanted to, it was such a massive project and I could never afford it [laughs]. Then right after the comic finished out at the end of 2015 I started working with my current agent who’s amazing. She started looking around, we started figuring what would be the best option, as far as publishing goes. We found Gallery 13, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, at the end of last year. Overall it’s been about four years.
MOK: And the webcomic finished before you were looking for a publisher.
ATA: Yes, though I did have to completely figure out the colors, not from scratch, but I had to do a lot of work making the comic from RGB web format color to CMYK. There are a couple of cleanups, there are a couple of things changed to make it more readable. When I first started the comic, the lettering was terrible [laughs], so bad. It’s very, very similar to the original version.
MOK: I love this half-tone dot pattern. It calls back to me classic comics and zines and manga. Was there an influence for that?
ATA: I’m not sure if there’s a specific place I was drawing it from. I am obviously very manga-influenced and had wanted to work with screentones for awhile. At the time I thought instead of just a solid color, the halftone kinda helped it pop.
MOK: “Pop” is the right word. What was it like working with Gallery 13? Are they a new imprint?
ATA: They’re pretty new, I think. So far, and I think in the future, it’s really been amazing. They’ve been very nice, very pleasant. A lot of good energy surrounding the work. And it is interesting to be a genderqueer author who is going into “triple-A” publishing or whatever the term is, and I think when you go in, there’s an anxiety of… You know, I have to explain this, and hopefully people are okay and respectful. I had that conversation with Gallery 13, just being this is what it is, and they’ve been so amazing about it.
MOK: With the themes of dichotomy of the book, near the end, Isaac confronts his double. Did this ring with the dichotomy you were trying to make between seizure world, and like, regular world?
ATA: There definitely is a divide there. You’ll notice his double has the missing eye, but it’s not quite there, it’s sort of fantastical. It’s in the same style as the daggers. There’s a divide there between the functional part of Isaac, and the other part that’s the very real depression. That’s like, “I don’t wanna fix it, I just wanna lay down!” [laughs]. There’s that part where I’m really trying to function properly in this society, and then inside there’s this frustration that I can’t really compartmentalize in my day-to-day.
MOK: I wanted to ask about the daggers, because you have this clear symbology of the daggers with eyes, representing seizures oncoming. How did you develop that?
ATA: I wanted to put iconography of the seizures, again, going into the suture of the narrative, don’t just tell people, show don’t tell. And I thought that was important for a comic about illness, especially one that is very misunderstood. Even if you don’t 100% get everything about epilepsy, or you don’t relate, the idea that there is something dangerous following you, watching you and thus the eyes, is more relatable across the board. It helps people get into it and feel what Isaac’s feeling. I chose a dagger with eyes so you’re just constantly being followed and being watched, ‘cause that’s what it feels like. With epilepsy, everyone has a different experience, but with mine and I think with a lot of other peoples’, there’s the feeling that it never really goes away. Even on days when you’re feeling kind of alright, and you’re feeling mostly functional, you’re never at 0%. It’s always watching you, it’s always there to some extent. That’s the origin of that iconography. I chose that specific dagger, which people in English refer to as the Arabic dagger, also referred to as the jambiya, which is a particular type of dagger in classic Arab culture, particularly in the Gulf that is often worn. A lot of times, it can represent protection in a way, but I did want to subvert that with this weapon that is tied to my culture but present in a way where I think you can understand it even if you don’t know where it comes from.
MOK: Talking about images specific to comics reminds me of your work in games. I wanted to ask about your work in games, what your relationship to it is like. You worked on this game Four Horsemen, a visual novel, in which four teens are the horsemen of the apocalypse. Can you talk about your relationship with games?
ATA: I always loved games, since I was a kid, and it was always kind of a far-off thing, like maybe I would make my own someday… Recently a lot of my favorites have been creator-made RPG Maker games, because there’s something so great about where they come from, and having a very small group of people or one person working on this project with an accessible software. I started to realize, there’s more accessibility, there’s more software out there that allows people to make games and have a shot at it without having to get involved in this big and admittedly very flawed industry. In 2015, I met Kevin Chen, the director of Four Horsemen. Around the same time, I started working on another visual novel called Ghosts of Miami. It was switching on and off doing characters [for Four Horsemen] and backgrounds [for Ghosts of Miami], in the same day sometimes [laughs]. My relation to games is so funny, it just happened so quickly. And I was working on a third game, I did a really short abstract adventure game called Being in RPG Maker for a gallery show about Palestinian solidarity and lived experience. About a half-hour long, and it’s supposed to convey, similarly to Mis(h)adra, where I tried to use iconography and ways to immerse the audience into something they may not understand or have experienced. Three games in a year and a half or something like that [laughs].
MOK: Are you aware of Soha Kareem’s work? ...She’s a games maker and critic, and has made at least one game [Penalties] about Palestinian experiences.
ATA: I will have to check that out!
MOK: My favorite of hers is a game [reProgram] about kink, and using kink to work through depression and trauma.
ATA: I would love to see that because that sounds great [laughs]. It just makes me really hype to see middle eastern voices and Arab voices in games and any media really, but particularly Palestinian voices. It’s a very ignored voice, even though we have gone through so much [sadly laughs], and there’s so much to say… Games and comics are my two favorite things to work in, and as Mis(h)adra is wrapping up, I have five games I wanna make and I gotta pick one!
MOK: Can you tell me about what you might make?
ATA: I have been throwing around the idea—this wouldn’t be til mid-next year, probably—I have been thinking of a game processing some trauma that I’ve been through. In a similar way, where it is part of the narrative, but there’s a lot of different things that help you work into it. I’ve been thinking about making this sort of adventure game in RPG Maker about processing trauma, and my goal is to try to get it out around Mother’s Day next year. You can probably connect the dots there [laughs].
MOK: I’m your girl [laughs]! I will play this game and cry endlessly.
ATA: Thank you [laughs]! I don’t wanna say too much about it ‘cause you know, Inshallah. The point is I have a lot of games ideas right now and that I know it’s possible.
MOK: I’m really appreciative that you’re talking about trauma. In the book, you get to this character who’s talking about her depression, and how she also gets attacks, anxiety attacks… I found a lot to empathize with, with the idea of triggers being everywhere, and never being able to shut off. That resonated with me very deeply.
ATA: I’m very happy to hear that, ‘cause obviously I want epileptics to read it, but I also am happy that anybody who has something that they’re dealing with internally looks to me and is like, “I can relate to this even though I don’t have epilepsy.” I think a lot comes from the fact that epilepsy is sort of a package. It’s an all-encompassing package where almost by default you get anxiety and depression and PTSD and all this stuff just because of the nature of the illness. It comes often, not for everybody, but it is common. Just the general idea, of something constantly being on your mind, or being a threat to you that people can’t see. You have to have this point where it’s like, what am I going to do about this? So I’m glad that comes across to non-epileptics as well.
MOK: That point you describe of “What am I going to do about this,” that seems like the conclusion of the book. That point where Isaac says something like, “I want to live, I need to live.” That seems so much like the point that you reached maybe as a person as well as a creator.
ATA: It’s interesting, that point was around the time I started making the comic. Like, I need to live with this, and for lack of a better phrase, deal with this in some way, to get into a healthy place. That’s part of why I started making the comic in the first place. Because of Mis(h)adra.... if I hadn’t made the comic, I wouldn’t be nearly as functional as I am now. It really was a point of art therapy. That point is similarly where Isaac leaves off. Now he’s at a point where he can really work towards being in a healthy place. And it’s up to the reader, I guess [laughs]... Things wrap up in a hopeful place, and even if he says things aren’t gonna be easy and it won’t happen overnight, but I’m at least mentally in a place where I can work towards being happy and healthy and functional, all things considered.
Ata , Iasmin Omar: MIS(H)ADRA
Kirkus Reviews.
(Aug. 15, 2017):
COPYRIGHT 2017 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Ata , Iasmin Omar MIS(H)ADRA Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster (Adult Fiction) $25.00 10, 3 ISBN:
978-1-5011-6210-7
Artist, illustrator, and game designer Ata presents the story of a college student struggling with epilepsy
while trying to live a normal life.It's been five years since the first seizure, and life isn't getting any easier
for Isaac. His frazzled, fragile state has him missing school while classmates spread rumors that he's on
drugs. In fact, he is on drugs--pills to battle his epilepsy. Isaac is painfully aware of his illness and its
triggers (lack of sleep, intense physical and emotional stress, and even anxiety about epilepsy), but
unfortunately, most of the people around him (roommates, teachers, doctors, family) underplay the severity
of his condition. Frustrated by the limitations his illness imposes on him, Isaac pushes himself to enjoy
something close to a normal life--going to parties and drinking with friends--which eventually leads to a
violent seizure that lands him in the hospital. But the injury also earns the attention of friend-of-a-friend Jo,
who feels an intense sympathy for Isaac's plight. But will even Jo's efforts be enough to help Isaac push
through the daily agony of his condition? Ata renders the story in a vibrant manga style, most strikingly
depicting Isaac's seizures as a swarm of floating daggers, each blade bearing a single eye and trailing a long
string of beads, the weapons encircling Isaac in hypnotizing patterns before slicing him to shreds. The
details of Isaac's illness feel decidedly lived-in, and Isaac's exhaustion with the struggle required to live his
life is palpably, dramatically realized. But while the specifics of the story are compellingly unique (if
occasionally flirting with opacity), the arc feels overly familiar. Nevertheless, the spotlight shone on an
underrepresented demographic is commendable.Big and stylish--of particular interest to those dealing with
epilepsy or wanting to know more about the condition.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Ata , Iasmin Omar: MIS(H)ADRA." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Aug. 2017. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A500364991/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=2487bed5.
Accessed 25 Apr. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A500364991
Review: The other realms of epilepsy revealed in ‘Mis(h)adra’
10/10/2017 5:00 PM BY JOHN SEVEN
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Mis(h)adra is a hard work to criticize, largely because it’s so personal and so raw in its portrayal of the intimate. Iasmin Omar Ata is an epileptic and Mis(h)adra is autobiographical in that respect. Following Isaac as he struggles in college due to epilepsy, Ata has crafted a revealing work — not revealing of his personal self, to be honest, but revealing of the epileptic experience in terms that someone who has never had anything close to that can begin to understand.
Isaac is aware of his epilepsy, which he was diagnosed with several years before, but something’s changed. His spells are becoming more intense, his triggers more delicate, and his ability to rebound more difficult. The latter issue has become so difficult that it is starting to effect friendships and casual relationships, turning any given interaction or social event into a disastrous nightmare for him. Forget about the rigors of going to college, doing the work that needs to be done, maintaining that work. Isaac is falling apart.
To make the situation worse, when he attempts to find medical help for this spiraling situation, he finds his concerns rebuffed, his belief that something has changed about his epilepsy shrugged off.
Enter Jo, who takes it upon herself to show Isaac support at all costs. At a time when friends are dropping like flies, exasperated by Isaac’s inability to follow through on the basics of friendship because of his medical struggle, and Isaac’s family takes a step back out of confusion and shame, Jo seems determined to be the antidote.
I could quibble with certain aspects of the telling, for instance, I feel like it could be a shorter work, but that just feels like it misses the point of the book. Ata has crafted a pretty harrowing depiction of what an epilepsy sufferer experiences, both externally and internally. It’s that internal part that’s really important here. In order to portray what goes on psychologically, neurologically, during the fits, Ata takes Isaac into a realm of neon-psychedelia that displaces him from the real world and shreds his perceptions of what’s actually going on. It’s in these abstract spaces that he is most lost, most ready to pack it in, and it’s these passages that make the book truly special. If at times the other scenes can feel like exposition about the situation Isaac is in, these sections show you the painful displacement he experiences, the loss of self and surroundings, and the internal terror that we on the outside could never see, and that’s powerful stuff.
It’s also helpful. To be fair, the exposition puts these abstract sections into a context that makes the feel a bit like an overpowering manual that brings you into the sufferer’s experience in order to not only build sympathy, but practicality. I can imagine Mis(h)adra doing a great job to help others in the situation — Isaac’s, of course, but also his friend’s and family’s — in a direct way, and I truly hope it manages to find this audience.
By Sarah Hunter October 21, 2015 0 Comments
Read More →
Webcomics Wednesday: Iasmin Omar Ata’s Mis(h)adra
Likely StoriesAs the graphic-novels editor at Booklist, I’m already a little biased about the format’s ability to communicate complicated subject matter in a compelling, tidy way. Sometimes artwork just does it better than words, and that’s especially true of Iasmin Omar Ata’s Mis(h)adra, a semi-autobiographical comic about Arab American Isaac, who suffers from epilepsy. I bet you’re curious about that title—it’s “formed from the Arabic words for ‘seizure’ and ‘cannot,’” which captures not only the trauma of Isaac’s seizures but the daily struggle to function with epilepsy.
Mis(h)adra
Isaac is in college and trying very hard to keep up with his classes, but stress, fatigue, and anxiety are all triggers for his seizures. If there’s anything that characterizes college, it’s stress, fatigue, and anxiety—none of which are helped by Isaac’s use of alcohol and drugs—and the threat of a seizure constantly looms in an aura, depicted in glowing green daggers that hover around him at the least convenient moments.
Mis(h)adra
The pressures of school and managing his epilepsy aside, Isaac has a really hard time letting people in or communicating what he really needs. He’s reluctant to seem like a burden or a weirdo, so he tries to hide it as much as he can. Even when Jo, a friend of his roommate’s, makes a concerted effort to be kind and understanding, Isaac manages to push her away. A flurry of terrible doctors who don’t listen to him only make matters worse, suggesting that he’s merely suffering from panic attacks instead of severe, frequent seizures.
Mis(h)adra
Gradually, the daggers become more and more insistent and menacing, and when Isaac does fall into a seizure they chop and slice at his limbs and face, gouging out an eye. Ata’s visualization of the seizures is fascinating. In jarring combinations of bright colors that seem to pulse against each other, the lines and figures shatter into messy, jostling compositions before settling into pages of blackness. When Isaac begins experiencing a new kind of seizure, which leaves him in an almost catatonic stupor, he exists in a world of black and red with only brief windows into the soft yellow-and-purple, manga-style real world, a place he can only reach by tentatively reaching through those gaps.
Mis(h)adra
Thankfully, Isaac’s spiraling depression and isolation eventually comes to an end, and with the solidarity of good friends and the careful attention of capable neurologist, he begins to get back on his feet. Those hopeful closing moments are a real relief after his dreadful experiences, and they provide a heartening message for readers who might suffer from chronic illnesses or disorders. But it’s Ata’s arresting images of seizures, full of juddering motion, angry color, and disorienting perspective, that linger. Ata recently posted the final chapter of Mis(h)adra, so the story is currently available in its entirety.
MIS(H)ADRA BY IASMIN OMAR ATA
GALLERY 13, 2017; 288 PP
REVIEWED BY BRITNY BROOKS
My seizures are triggered by lack of sleep, intense physical or emotional stress, or sometimes even anxiety about epilepsy itself. One or any combination of these things can give me an aura, which can lead to a seizure. (6)
In this debut graphic novel, Mis(h)adra, author Iasmin Omar Ata tells the story of Isaac, a young college student suffering with epilepsy and dealing with the struggles of daily life, doctors, and college. In the author’s own words, mis(h)adra is a loose play on the Arabic words misadra which means “seizure” and mish adra which is slang for “I cannot.” Originally, a 15-part serial webcomic of the same name, this graphic novel is full of bright color, emotion, and the manga-inspired art adds a level of playfulness to each panel of this semi-autobiographical story.
The contrast between the animated, whimsical manga-inspired style and the seriousness of Isaac’s story is one of the graphic novel’s many strengths. The art gives Isaac an even fuller range of emotions that help you sympathize and relate in a very short amount of time, which then allows you to also understand and see his seizures and epilepsy in a more intimate way. Another huge strength, though it is weird to say, is the way that Ata has portrayed Isaac’s auras and seizures. Throughout the book you see turquoise daggers with an eye following Isaac around and when he has a seizure they are what cut and attack him. It gives you the sense that no matter what Isaac does he is always being followed and watched—and that the fear of having a seizure is always on his mind.
It is during the seizures that Ata lets the real dissolve into the realm of the fantastic with panels losing their form, breaking down, and changing from the softer yellows, purple, and peach of the rest of the story to black, red, and electric blue as Isaac is cut, stabbed, and torn apart by one-eyed turquoise daggers. It is here in this void like place that you see the deep emotional, physical, and psychological pain and stress that Isaac is under. It is in this intimate place that you realize the true extent of the dichotomy of Isaac’s life and Ata is able to make it both a jarring yet beautiful experience. This visually stunning, emotional story is part of the first batch of graphic novels to come out of the new imprint Galley 13 and I think it put them off to a great start. Mis(h)adra is a great book for those who enjoy non-fiction or biographical graphic novels and manga readers alike—and that is not something that you see everyday.
Mis(h)adra
Iasmin Omar Ata. Gallery 13, $25 trade paper (272p) ISBN 978-1-50116-210-7
Originally serialized as a webcomic, Ata’s debut tells the story of Isaac, an Arab-American college student struggling with epilepsy. His seizures, and the auras that precede them, leave him exhausted and often bedridden. A series of unsympathetic doctors are convinced his episodes are merely anxiety attacks. Meanwhile, he’s on the verge of failing several of his classes due to unavoidable absences, and none of his friends seem to understand. Ata draws Isaac’s good days in sunny yellows and soft pinks. His seizures attack in vicious spikes of black and red, often shaking him for 10 or more pages at a time. The only warnings are the auras, visually represented as a net of knives hanging over Isaac’s head. Ata’s art is terrific at depicting the hellish seizures, but the overall story, which takes place mostly within Isaac’s thoughts as he heads for a somewhat anticlimactic breakthrough, suffers from a lack of grounding and detail. Agent: Judy Hansen, the Hansen Agency. (Oct.)
DETAILS
Reviewed on: 09/04/2017
Release date: 10/03/2017