Welsh arts-in-health charity Re-Live are about to launch Here & Now Issue 1, their latest life story comic.
Here and Now is 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 available to pre-order through UK and European comic shops now, and premieres at the Lakes International Comic Art Festivalin Kendal this weekend (3rd – 4th October 2026), and goes on sale in comic shops on Wednesday 11th November. US distribution is expected to be announced shortly
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. It is the charity’s first international collaboration, made with Tenjin-kai, a dementia care organisation in Ofunato, northern Japan, as part of the Wales-Japan 2025 Culture Programme.
The comic is a flip-book with two covers. One side reads left to right, in the Western way; turn it over and the other side reads right to left, as manga does. Two covers, two countries, two reading directions. Read side by side, the four stories invite readers in Wales and Japan to learn from each other’s experience of dementia, and from each other’s approach to care.
On the Japanese-facing cover is the final painting by Ebisu Yoshikazu – one of the originators of Japan’s heta-uma (“bad but good”) movement, a contributor to the legendary manga anthology Garo since the 1970s, and for years a much-loved face on Japanese primetime television. Now in his eighties and living with dementia, Ebisu-sensei licensed the painting, titled Relieved (ほっとした), for the comic.
Welsh illustrator Jonathan Edwards has painted two of the comic’s real storytellers, Mr and Mrs Sato, standing before it in a gallery. For Ebisu, an artist who has spent his life telling stories in pictures, it is a quietly powerful statement: creative expression does not end with a dementia diagnosis.
“Within these pages are stories shared by people living with dementia, and by family members, in both Wales and Japan,” says Karin Diamond, Artistic Director of Re-Live. “We are deeply thankful for the courage and openness it has taken each storyteller to share their experiences with us. We have seen how creativity can help people reconnect with parts of themselves and with one another.”
“We realised that the humour, humanity, and surprising moments we encounter every day in our lives alongside people with dementia might be expressed and shared through comics,” says Dr Yukimi Uchide, Chair of the Tenjin-kai Social Welfare Foundation.
Four stories – two from Wales, two from Japan – are told by the people who lived them:
Carri, on caring for her mother Mavis – the isolation and loneliness that family carers rarely speak about, and the love running underneath it all. Drawn by Archie McKenzie
Patrick, a former rugby player living with vascular dementia, on his diagnosis and on what keeps him going – family, friends, a Sunday roast and a turn on the dance floor. Drawn by Matt Beese
Ritsuko Sato, from Ofunato, on life alongside her husband as his dementia progressed, and one extraordinary day when his carers took him back to his home and his old school. Drawn by Tokyo mangaka Kawakatsu Tokushige
Dr Yukimi Uchide, one of Japan’s leading dementia specialists, on what her own mother Fumiko-san was able to teach her about dementia – insights that a lifetime of professional expertise had not given her. Drawn by Yuki Monou
The collaboration is fifteen years in the making. 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.
“What I really love about Tenjin-kai’s philosophy of care is the belief that people living with dementia still have a part to play in their own lives and in the lives of those around them – cooking, cleaning, gardening, caring for each other, and contributing to the everyday life of the community,” says Diamond. “As Dr Uchide taught me, connections with people living with dementia are found in the ordinary, seemingly insignificant moments of daily life. There is so much we can learn from that in Wales.”
“I hope that, by reading this comic, more people will deepen their understanding of those living with dementia and grow kinder not only towards them, but towards all people,” says Dr Uchide. “If that happens, perhaps our communities can become gentler, brighter, and more welcoming places for everyone.”
More than 57 million people worldwide are living with dementia, according to the World Health Organization, with nearly 10 million new cases every year. Behind each of them are family members and carers whose experiences are rarely told.
• Here and Now (44 pages, full colour, £5.00) is available to pre-order now from UK comic shopsose 10th October. Copies are also available directly from Re-Live at www.re-live.org.uk at any time. US distribution is expected to be announced shortly
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John is the founder of downthetubes, launched in 1998. He is a comics and magazine editor, writer, and Press Officer for the Lakes International Comic Art Festival. He also runs Crucible Comic Press.
Working in British comics publishing since the 1980s, his credits include editor of titles such as Doctor Who MagazineandOverkill for Marvel UK, Babylon 5 Magazine, Star Trek Magazine, and its successor, Star Trek Explorer, and more. He also edited the comics anthology STRIP Magazine and edited several audio comics for ROK Comics; and has edited several comic collections and graphic novels, including volumes of “Charley’s War” and “Dan Dare”, and Hancock: The Lad Himself, by Stephen Walsh and Keith Page.
He’s the writer of comics such as Pilgrim: Secrets and Lies for B7 Comics; “Crucible”, a creator-owned project with 2000AD artist Smuzz; and “Death Duty” and “Skow Dogs”, with Dave Hailwood.
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