[PRESS RELEASE] It’s (Not Always) Fine: New Graphic Medicine Anthology “How Are You Feeling?” Centres Lived Experiences

15 July 2025, Singapore — Difference Engine’s DE Shorts range of comics is getting upsized in the Singapore-based Southeast Asian comics publisher’s newest title, How Are You Feeling? A Comics Anthology, releasing on 15 August 2025. The DE Shorts imprint’s focus on difficult conversations, contrasting encounters, and shared conundrums is centred in a big way in its first collected volume of graphic medicine stories featuring A Drip. A Drop. A Deluge: A Period Tragicomedy by Andeasyand, Bearing Witness by Vinita Ramani and Griselda Gabriele, and Worlds Apart: A Conversation about Mental Health by Wayne Rée and Nurjannah Suhaimi.

A girl navigates her first period while a woman anticipates her last. A mother loses her baby before she can hold him. A friend opens up about her struggles with mental health. The fictional stories in How Are You Feeling? are all underpinned by a deeply personal approach to mental health and other social issues, intricately stitched from the fabric of lived experience. The titular question of “How are you feeling?” echoes the perfunctory greeting, a familiar but empty phrase exchanged out of habit with no expectation of a genuine answer. But when asked in a spirit of earnestness, it can also be an invitation to honest conversations and human connection unencumbered by judgment and taboo.

In the opening title A Drip. A Drop. A Deluge: A Period Tragicomedy, Andeasyand cuts a slice in time into the menstrual lives of six women through whimsical illustrations that turn awkward and frustrating moments into painfully relatable vignettes, inviting one to laugh and cry at the same time. The breadth of women’s embodied experiences is captured also in Bearing Witness which sees Uma’s journey of pregnancy loss at the age of 42, and the emotional and spiritual weight of that singular grief as she searches for acceptance. In Worlds Apart: A Conversation about Mental Health, you catch up with your friend Charissa over coffee as she shares about her depression in an honest conversation about the common misconceptions around mental health.

When placed adjacently in How Are You Feeling?, these three seemingly isolated stories start to come into conversation with one another; the unseen struggles that become part of the everyday, the impact of language on the way we think about mental and emotional health, and the disconnect between medical discourse and personal experience are themes that echo throughout the collection as well as in the foreword by Thailand-based comics scholar Nicolas Verstappen, who notes “Visually inventive and universally resonant, How Are You Feeling? is a powerful contribution to the field of graphic medicine, offering Southeast Asian perspectives that further weave and diversify the threads connecting personal experiences and global discourses on mental and physical health.”

Publisher and Co-Founder of Difference Engine Felicia Low-Jimenez also reflects, “This anthology is a huge milestone for the DE Shorts imprint which began during the COVID-19 pandemic. In a time of isolation and yearning for human connection, we wanted to show how even the most challenging journeys are not taken alone; to see how far the imprint has come and how it’s still growing is a sign that there are so many more conversations still to be had.” 

DE Shorts continues beyond How Are You Feeling? A Comics Anthology with To the Last Gram by Shreya Davies and Vanessa Wong released in April this year as the fourth comic under this imprint, followed by Xocolatl: Language in an Alien Spacetime by Adan Jimenez and Josephine Tan slated for release in 2026.

How Are You Feeling? A Comics Anthology retails at $22.90 SGD (w/o GST) and is now available for preorder till 15 August 2025 through the following channels:
Difference Engine’s webstore: www.differenceengine.sg

Download the How Are You Feeling? A Comics Anthology press kit here.

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Website: https://differenceengine.sg/
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For enquiries, contact:
Olivia Djawoto
Marketing and Communications Manager, Difference Engine
olivia@differenceengine.sg

About the Creators

Andeasyand is a Nurulhuda Izyan who wrote and illustrated A Drip. A Drop. A Deluge: A Period Tragicomedy. She peddles puns and observations surrounding mental health, the period cycle, and everything in between through illustrations and long captions. When she isn’t, she is making a crafty mess. She is currently working on Unbecoming Maya, a coming-of-age young adult comic slated for release in 2026.

Griselda Gabriele, illustrator of Bearing Witness, is a Singapore-based Indonesian artist with experience in editorial illustration, comics, and visual development for games and animation. Her work and interests include a wide range of topics such as Southeast Asian arts and culture, gender-sensitive journalism, and information literacy.

Nurjannah Suhaimi is the illustrator of Worlds Apart: A Conversation about Mental Health. She is a designer based in Singapore, and a visual communications graduate from Nanyang Technological University, the School of Art, Design, and Media. As a self-motivated and proactive person, she takes pride in being able to adapt in stressful situations, and is always seeking new experiences to keep her on her toes!

Vinita Ramani, author of Bearing Witness, is a writer and editor She has previously worked as a journalist for various local and regional publications, and as a publicist for film festivals, both in Singapore and abroad.

Wayne Rée is the co-creator of Worlds Apart: A Conversation About Mental Health. He is also the co-creator of award-winning title Work-Life Balance. He has spoken on multiple panels regionally and internationally, and in 2023, he started writing his first novel while he was a resident at the National Centre for Writing in Norwich. Find him at www.waynereewrites.com.

About Difference Engine

Difference Engine is an independent comics publisher based in Singapore. We are inspired by stories from Asia, and we are committed to publishing diverse, well-written, and beautifully illustrated comics of all genres and for all ages. We collaborate closely with Southeast Asian creators, both new and experienced, with genuine and thought-provoking ideas to share. Difference Engine was founded in 2018 and is part of the Potato Productions group of companies.