Welsh arts-in-health charity Re-Live has announced Here and Now, a life story comic co-created with people living with dementia and their families in Wales and Japan. Published in three separate editions – English, Welsh (Yma Nawr) and Japanese (今、ここに立つ) – it is on sale in UK and European comic shops from Wednesday, November 11, and available to pre-order now from comic shops in the United States and Canada, with a final order cut-off of December 21, 2026 and release on January 27, 2027.

Manga and Western comics meet

The comic is a flip-book with two covers. One side reads left to right, in the traditional Western style; but when you turn it over to the other side, it reads right to left, as manga does. Two covers, two countries, two reading directions. Together, the four stories invite readers into the lives of people living with dementia and their families in Wales and Japan.

On the Japanese-facing cover is the final painting by Ebisu Yoshikazu – one of the originators of Japan’s heta-uma (“bad but good”) art movement, a contributor to the legendary manga anthology Garo since the 1970s, published in English by London’s Breakdown Press (The Pits of Hell, I Wish I Was Stupid), and for years a much-loved face on Japanese primetime television. Now in his eighties and living with dementia, Ebisu-sensei and his family gave permission for the painting, titled Relieved (ほっとした), to be used for the comic. Welsh illustrator Jonathan Edwards has painted two of the comic’s storytellers, Mr and Mrs Sato, standing before Ebisu-sensei’s painting in a gallery. For Ebisu, an artist who has spent his life telling stories in pictures, it is a powerful statement that an artist can go on expressing themselves while living with dementia.

The book brings together some of the most exciting names in alternative manga and Western comics. Tokyo mangaka Kawakatsu Tokushige (Tokyo Blues; The Cursed Body, Glacier Bay Books), fresh from his first US tour, drew Dream Again and hand-lettered both Welsh stories into Japanese. Yuki Monou (My Pink is Overflowing) drew I’m a Human Being Too! The English translation is by Ryan Holmberg, a leading scholar and translator of Japanese alternative manga, and the logo in all three languages was designed by New York letterer Jared K Fletcher, whose logo work includes Wonder Woman and X-Men. The two Welsh stories are drawn by Matt Beese and Archie McKenzie, with covers by Welsh illustrator Jonathan Edwards and Swansea artist Sok. The comic had its UK festival premiere at the Lakes International Comic Art Festival in Kendal in October.

Ordinary lives, extraordinary stories

Here and Now is Re-Live’s third life story comic, following two issues of Coming Home, which shared the mental health stories of military veterans and are now used by veterans’ services across the UK and internationally. Here and Now builds on that work. Two of its four stories come from Wales and two from Japan. Each is shared by a person living with dementia or a family member, and each is drawn by a different artist.

Fifteen years in the making

Here and Now is Re-Live’s first international manga collaboration, made with Tenjin-kai, a dementia care organization in Ofunato, northern Japan, as part of the Wales–Japan 2025 Culture Programme. Karin Diamond first travelled to Ofunato in 2011 on a Churchill Fellowship to study with Dr Uchide, whose relationship-centred approach to care went on to shape Re-Live’s theatre with people living with dementia and its training for more than 5,000 care workers across Wales and beyond.

Availability

Here and Now is 44 pages of story in full colour, and retails for $6.99 in the US or £5.00 in the UK. In the UK and Europe it goes on sale on Wednesday, November 11 via Diamond Comic Distributors (order code SEP262089). In the United States and Canada it can be pre-ordered now through Lunar Distribution via Massive Indies (order code 1126MP0956), with a final order cut-off of December 21, 2026, for release on January 27, 2027. Copies are also available directly from Re-Live at www.re-live.org.uk at any time.