'Alles Op Z'n Kop! - Lotgenoten'.
Manon de Koning is a Dutch cartoonist, who has been chronicling her experiences with Acquired Brain Injury (ABI) in comic format for related websites and magazines. Her comics have been collected in the book series 'Alles Op Z'n Kop!'.
Life and work
Born in 1991, Manon de Koning was a student of Dutch Literature at the University of Leiden, when an accident during soccer practice left her with permanent brain injury. At age 21, her life suddenly changed, and during her lengthy rehabilitation program, she learned that she had to cope with her new, permanent situation. As reading became too difficult for her, her therapist suggested that she pick up another childhood hobby again, drawing.
'Alles Op Z'n Kop!'
At first, De Koning drew funny stories about her friends and their lives, but when her rehabilitation center asked her to make a comic about her overstimulation therapy, she had found her niche. Since then, De Koning has been chronicling her own rehabilitation process, but also the stories of other people with acquired brain injury, or from the perspective of their loved ones. Characterized by a positive sense of humor and an ability to put things into perspective, De Koning's aim is to help people understand what brain injury is or identify with it.
In 2016, the comic about De Koning's own therapy, 'Golfsurfers!', was published on the website of Sophia Revalidatie, and received positive response. Since then, she has had her own comic blogs on informational websites like hersenletsel-uitleg.nl and hersenletsel.nl. Since 2022, she has also been making a regular comic for the quarterly Hersenletsel Magazine. Through the Breindok organization of Judith Zadoks, De Koning's comics have been released in the comic book series 'Alles Op Z'n Kop!'. The first volume (2019), contained the episodes about her own rehabilitation, the second volume (2024), collected the stories of thirteen fellow sufferers, focusing on the invisible consequences of ABI. In addition, she has made the illustrations for 'De Puzzel van NAH' (Breindok, 2020), a booklet about pupils with ABI, and for 'Leven met NAH' (2023), a quartet game made in collaboration with fellow sufferer Faaria Chand.
'Alles Op Z'n Kop!'