Vasilis Pozios
A board-certified forensic psychiatrist who writes comics that destigmatize mental illness, co-founder of Broadcast Thought, and creator of the PRISM Award-winning superhero Aura.
Dr. Vasilis Pozios doesn’t just write comics about mental health—he lives it, every day, as a board-certified forensic psychiatrist. When he picked up his first issue of Detective Comics #540 at age six, he fell in love with the medium. But as he grew older, he noticed something troubling: the comics industry kept casting characters with mental illnesses as villains and monsters. Rather than accept that broken narrative, Pozios grabbed a pen and rewrote it.
His breakthrough came with Aura, a comic short story about Alexis Pope, a Brooklyn fashion designer living with bipolar disorder who transforms into a superhero. Her powers surge through the visual auras of her migraines—rainbow-tinged energy that lets her fly and levitate objects. But Aura refuses to romanticize the struggle: Alexis has survived a suicide attempt, battles treatment adherence, and confronts daily stigma with unflinching honesty. Illustrated by Marguerite Sauvage, the story won the 2015 PRISM Award from the Entertainment Industries Council for its compassionate, medically accurate portrayal of mental health.
As co-founder of Broadcast Thought, Pozios and colleagues H. Eric Bender and Praveen Kambam have built a consultancy that trains the entertainment industry to portray mental illness without stigma. He’s written for The New York Times, Wired, and The Hollywood Reporter, and has taken the stage at San Diego Comic-Con and New York Comic Con to champion mental health in pop culture. His contribution to the All We Ever Wanted anthology—titled “On the Shoulders of Giants”—channels that same fierce compassion into a vision of a better, more understanding world.
Perfect for fans of Marjorie Liu and her groundbreaking work on Monstress, or anyone who believes superhero stories can heal as powerfully as they entertain.
