USC Annenberg graduate student Dan Carino promoted his journalism comic “Tibet’s Sacrifice: Exiled Lives” at Comic-Con 2012, a convention celebrating all things comic book, in San Diego.

"As a panelist, it was an amazing experience to share the floor with a handful of great cartoonist and comics journalists," said Carino (M.A., Specialized Journalism) about his first time at Comic-Con. "It was also neat to see that there are plenty of readers interested in comics journalism!"

During a trip to India with journalism professor Diane Winston's JOUR 585: Reporting on Religion class, Carino worked to discover why many Tibetans are willing to die from self-immolation — or setting oneself on fire — for their homeland.  He interviewed Shibayan Raha, an activist who was arrested in 2007 for attempting to self-immolate, and visited the refugee camp Majnu Ka Tilla. Although the history of Tibet is long and complex, the basics of the current situation are that the People’s Republic of China has control over Tibet and many activists say Tibetans are mistreated and denied basic human rights. There is a strong movement for Tibetan independence and many monks light themselves on fire in protest. Carino said he created the comic "to cover a story that has been underreported and to push the envelope on an emerging form of journalism, comics/graphics journalism." After the online comic was published, Tibetan poet and activist Tsering Woeser translated it into Chinese, where it was widely circulated. Although his work is now censored in mainland China, Carino said the reaction to his work "has been amazing."

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