Broken Frontier

What happens when a shoe-crazy, lipstick-obsessed, wine-swilling, pasta-slurping, fashion-fanatic, about-to-get-married big-city girl cartoonist with a fabulous life finds . . . a lump in her breast?” That’s the question that sets this powerful, funny, and poignant graphic memoir in motion.

Previously released in hardcover over three years ago, Marisa Acocella Marchetto's collection of strips telling the story of her eleven-month, ultimately triumphant bout with breast cancer—from diagnosis to cure, and every challenging step in between - is finally released in softcover at the end of September 2009.

An American woman has a one of eight chance of developing breast cancer but death rates have been going down for this disease the last two decades (figures courtesy of Publishers Weekly). One of eight though is still an immense figure and that's why the entertaining yet educational approach of the subject by Marisa Acocella Marchetto is so important. It carries the implied weight of the subject on a breezy atmosphere, treating it with respect but firmly placed in the life of an actual person with all their own worries about Life.

The pacing of the comic is very fast with sometimes text heavy pages but there is also a lot to cover, even when you stick to the essentials. While a big part of the book is Marchetto and her environment dealing with the news of her cancer, another big part of the book is a detailed look at the consequences and the treatment this involves. She often trails off on detailed looks at the types of chemo, the various shots she needs to undergo and drawing detailed graphs of cartoonish cancer cells in battle with her therapy. Marchetto's outlook on life is very positive though, finding inspiration for the title bout of her life in her work - turning her fight into a series of strips - and pending marriage. Determined to see this thing through, she refuses to give up her fashionista lifestyle, keeps dressing in style and keeps on living the good life as best as she can.

Marchetto is a cartoonist for The New Yorker and Glamour and she uses a highly personal, cartoonish loose line to put her musings to paper. She uses a pen to draw and this leads to a scratchy, open style. In a smart move she reduces backgrounds (if there are any) to an absolute minimum. Settings are implied by objects or clothing, a nurse can play stand-in for a whole hospital while a dinner plate refers to a restaurant. It only serves to clarify the story and the characters though, there is never any doubt as to what is going on where on the page.

And while the art certainly gives breathing room to the many text pages, it can sometimes be hard on the eyes because of the colouring. Overly garish and not-so-subtle basic colours, the white spaces in between lines are just plainly coloured in with one colour with the adjoining white space in another. There is a default blue, a default skin colour, a default orange etc that just keeps on repeating. Since the drawing style is so highly personal, it certainly is a missed opportunity. By putting in a bit more effort into the colouring, the graphics of Cancer Vixen could have been elevated to an even more individual level reaching reader identification.

Cancer Vixen: A True Story by Marisa Acocella Marchetto is an essential book because it is a memoir and as such, it is an emotional, personal and honest retelling of fighting cancer and how to come out the winner. Marisa Acocella Marchetto knows how to draw the reader in with excellent comedic timing and the weaving of several plot threads of her life while undergoing chemotherapy. She chronicles the reactions of her friends and family with a sharp eye and self-relativation. The innocent drawing style only makes the work more accessible to a mainstream audience, lending a clarity to the storytelling where a more complex approach would've fouled up the story.

Cancer Vixen: A True Story by Marisa Acocella Marchetto is published by Pantheon. It is a 224 pages full colour softcover graphic novel, retailing for $16.95 and is available in finer bookstores and comic shops across the world.