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From children's books to billboards, we combine words and pictures because the alloy is stronger than either alone. Consider that hot new genre, graphic novels (fictional stories that are presented in comic-strip format and published as a book). No, actually it's a medium, not a genre. It doesn't seem suited to autobiography, yet New Yorker Jude Milner turned her lifelong battle with obesity into a graphic novel that Penguin published in fall 2006: "Fat Free," subtitled "Amazing All-True Adventures of Supersize Woman!" I saw her on "Today" and called later to ask how she re-imagined her life in graphic terms.

Milner spoke via cell phone, as she walked in Central Park. "I originally pitched a book that would have my autobiography as only part of it," she explains, "an initial chapter introducing me as someone who has spent her life morbidly obese — the challenge of it, how I went through the struggles of it, then actually developed it into my career." The rest of the book would contain case studies and information about the emotional and physical aspects of weight loss through surgery.

But instead her editor at Penguin asked her to re-think the personal chapter as a graphic novel. "I jumped on the idea. Size and body image — it lends itself to this visual medium so beautifully. Now the book is just," Milner laughs, "all about me!"

Scripting it required re-thinking her life in panels related strictly to the theme. This challenge seems apt, because of Milner's lifelong habit of envisioning herself in a different form. Scenes from the 1960s (she was born in 1957) show the young Jude projecting a svelte alter ego into TV programs such as "The Avengers" and "Star Trek." "Captain," says Mr. Spock, "I have beamed up Princess Jude of Marsbar." Milner imagines a group she dubs P.H.A.T. turning into a firing squad because she decides to have weight-loss surgery. Her two selves exist on different planets and crash in a "when worlds collide" scenario. A candy-store clerk metamorphoses into a demon.

But we also watch teenage Jude run away from home and straight into sexual abuse. She adds, "The purpose of this for me — a lot of it was to practice what I preach as a therapist: to bring out the secrets of your life in order to make yourself a more cohesive person." With irony too blatant for art, Milner's mother went blind before her daughter published a visual story of her life. Milner had to read it to her, describing the artwork. "She knew almost none of my life that was in there," she says.

"A lot of stuff had to go," says Milner, "to turn your life into 64 pages." Her concise script is brought to life in gorgeous black-and-white drawings by illustrator Mary Wilshire, whose many credits include "Red Sonja" and "Spider-Man" for Marvel — as you might guess from the triumphant image of the Rubenesque caped heroine on the cover.

All narrative requires selection and omission. Come to think of it, I've been quoting only Milner's words, omitting her warm tone and frequent laughter. I also heard birds and children calling in the background. Milner spoke above the soundtrack of everyday life, the hubbub of the group in which we struggle to become an individual — with now and then one voice, through some creative response to life's challenges, standing out in the crowd.

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