Hanging On by a Thread by Noémie Naoumi comics review

Hanging On by a Thread. Noémie Naoumi. Black Panel Press. 2025. 240pp. $14.99 PDF, $34.99 hardcover.

Noémie Naoumi is a Lebanese artist, now based in Paris, who has created quite a remarkable graphic memoir. It is about being young, full of life and determined and falls within the category of graphic medicine. Our story begins with Noémie, an 18-year-old art student in Beirut, with a sense of adventure and humor. And then she is diagnosed with a form of cancer. All she knows is that her life has taken an abrupt change. It’s not the same life anymore. She thinks of herself as a whole other person and doesn’t blame her boyfriend if he wants to break up but he’s steadfast in being committed to her. What follows is Noémie’s journey, as she learns about what is happening to her, the treatment process and life beyond it.

As I’ve been reading more and more graphic medicine works, I’m always humbled and intrigued by what I read. These are often auto-bio with the main character confronting a life crisis and following a certain path: depicting one’s self; learning about the challenge ahead; and some kind of conclusion.

“The best oncologist. The best PET scan. The best cancer.”

What happens is that the comics creator becomes a comics journalist, out in trenches, providing dispatches for the reader and perhaps for themselves to help make sense of it all. This is not a task for everyone. I can only imagine that most readers have at least one life crisis that they would just prefer to leave private. However, it is these very kind of life events that cry out for discussion and analysis. Going back to Noémie‘s first impulse, you have been forever changed and you will never quite go back to what it was like before. Well, you can fight like hell to regain your life, that is for sure.

Noémie Naoumi is, no doubt, a powerful artist. Her attitude is to tell it like it is in her paintings and illustration and, most certainly, in her comics. Her art has the energy of a live wire with a worldly-wise sensibility. It is clear to me, and it will be to the reader, that cancer is not going to stop her.