The Realist is a long-running autobiographical comic by the Israeli illustrator Asaf Hanuka, in which he turns ordinary moments from his own life, as a husband, a father and an artist in Tel Aviv, into single, often surreal images. A boring evening on the sofa becomes a superhero scene; a row with his wife becomes a twelve-round boxing match; a phone notification becomes a drug drip. The joke is usually on Hanuka himself, which is why the strips feel honest rather than preachy.
Hanuka was born in Israel in 1974 and is the twin brother of the illustrator Tomer Hanuka; the two have worked together on several projects. He contributed artwork to Ari Folman's animated documentary Waltz with Bashir (2008). The Realist started as a weekly page in the Israeli business newspaper Calcalist, which explains why some panels carry Hebrew titles, and has since been collected in English by Archaia in The Realist, The Realist: Plug and Play and The Realist: Last Day on Earth.
The thirty pages below are grouped by theme, each with a short note on what it shows and the idea behind it. You can find more of his work on asafhanuka.com and the Realist Facebook page.
Fatherhood, seen up close
Smile. A father photographs his small daughter, and in each frame she grows taller while he gets older. By the end she is the one holding the camera, first as he sits in a wheelchair, then by a hospital bed, and finally as an empty bed is wheeled away. It is one of the series' most quoted pages because it compresses a whole life cycle into six wordless images.
The Fantastic Four. A feverish dad lies in bed literally on fire like the Human Torch, then bathes a screaming child as a craggy, Thing-like figure, and finally stretches his arm across the room like Mr. Fantastic to reach a son who wants his mother. The superhero joke makes a familiar point: parents need powers they do not have, and children rarely notice the effort.
A Second Chance to Win. An exhausted, battered man slumps in the corner of a boxing ring while a small boy in red gloves stands in front of him, ready to fight. The title points to a common parental temptation: seeing a child as a fresh chance to win the battles you lost yourself.
The Master. A grinning child looms over a puppet theatre in which the two parents are the puppets, flailing as cups, toast and toys fly around them. Anyone who has run a household around a toddler's moods will recognise who is really pulling the strings.
It's Not a Bird. A father holds his son, dressed in a Superman costume, at the window of a plain apartment block, and the boy points excitedly at the sky. The title borrows the classic Superman line, and the image captures how a child's imagination can lift a drab urban scene.
Saturday Morning Cartoons. A sleeping father is ambushed at dawn by a child drawn as a gleeful yellow cartoon minion and a purple, bottle-wielding creature hovering above the bed, while the alarm clock sits forgotten on the floor. The weekend lie-in, the joke goes, is the first casualty of parenthood.
The Main Attraction. At an aquarium a mother photographs her husband and daughter posing inside the open jaws of a huge shark painted on the glass. Hanuka plays with the idea that the family photo, not the sea life, has become the real attraction of the day out.
A Spot in the Shade. While children play and balloons hang from a tree at a birthday picnic, the father staggers across the grass under a towering, toppling load of chairs, coolers, rolled mats, toilet paper and the cake. It is a comic tribute to the unseen logistics behind every carefree family party.
Skin Deep. Two children sit at a tattoo station and cover their father's body with their own scribbled drawings, skulls and stick figures, while he grimaces but holds still. The image works as a metaphor for how children leave permanent marks on their parents, and as a parody of adult tattoo culture.
The Price of Happiness. In the upper half, a nurse hands a baby to a delighted couple; in the darker, upside-down lower half the mirrored scene is reversed. The Hebrew line at the top translates roughly as "they say it was fun here before I was born". Readers have interpreted it in different ways, including as a reflection on what is gained and lost when a child arrives.
Marriage as a superhero story and a boxing match
Handy Man. A man on a stepladder hangs a large mirror while a woman looks on, and the reflection shows him as Superman. Small domestic jobs, Hanuka suggests, come with an inflated self-image attached.
Local Wonder. A companion piece: this time she climbs on a chair to clean the window while he steadies it, and her reflection in the glass is Wonder Woman. Placed side by side with Handy Man, it reads as a quiet nod to the everyday heroics on both sides of a marriage.
Round 12. A husband and wife face each other as boxers, trade blows through the rounds and finally end up exhausted, bruised and lying in the same bed, staring in opposite directions. The title, a nod to a full championship-length fight, says a lot about how long some domestic arguments can feel.
A Day Off. A couple sets out for a shopping trip; she grows more cheerful and energetic with every bag, while he sinks under the load until he disappears into the ground. It is a light-hearted exaggeration of a well-worn joke about different ideas of a relaxing day.
Perfect Pair. In a shoe shop strewn with open boxes, a mother and daughter in matching good spirits try on shoes while the father slumps asleep in a chair. The Hebrew title means the same as the English one, a pun on a pair of shoes and a well-matched duo.
Storm Troopers. In a violent storm a father clings to his wife and child on top of a rooftop solar water tank, a familiar sight on Israeli roofs, as lightning strikes and floodwater rises. The Hebrew title translates as "anxiety level", and the page captures the urge to protect a family against forces far bigger than anyone.
Of Course I'm Listening. A woman covers her face in distress over a café table while her partner sits opposite in a full astronaut suit, with Earth and a space shuttle outside the window. It is a sharp visual shorthand for being physically present but mentally a world away.
Screens, bodies and self-image
Likecoholic. A man slumps in front of a Facebook page with an intravenous line running from the computer into his arm, while a fountain of blue thumbs-up hands pours out of his mouth. The Hebrew title is the same word written in Hebrew letters, and the image predates much of today's debate about social-media habits.
Emojinal. As a man stares at his phone, his face is stretched, peeled off and replaced by a skull, while the expressions he should be showing appear only on the screen. The title blends emoji and emotional, and the strip asks what happens to real feelings when we outsource them to icons.
Less Is More. A man takes off his glasses and then, one by one, removes his nose, ears and mouth until his face is blank, before drawing a simple smiley on it in red marker. It reads as a comment on simplifying yourself to be acceptable, or on the cartoonist's habit of reducing faces to a few lines.
Exponential Growth. A middle-aged man inspects his belly, takes up running and weightlifting in a red tracksuit, and ends as an absurdly overbuilt bodybuilder with the same small, bald head. The joke targets the all-or-nothing way many people approach fitness.
Second Life. The top half shows a grey domestic scene with a child, a wife and a man in a stained vest; the upside-down orange half shows a glamorous spy-film version of the same people. The title borrows the name of the online virtual world and suggests the fantasy life many people quietly run in their heads.
In this untitled sequence a man waits in an airport lounge as planes come and go. He dozes, imagines an embrace, falls asleep across the seats and finally walks off with his suitcase. Without a single word it captures the limbo of travel, where daydreams fill the hours of waiting.
Anxiety, violence and the wider world
Underworld. A happy child unwraps a toy robot on a living-room floor full of gifts; underneath, in a grey, crowded room, rows of other children assemble the same toy. It is one of the clearest social-commentary pages in the series, pointing to child labour hidden behind cheap consumer goods.
Viral. A man whose head is a black scribble draws at a desk, and the scribble spreads to his son and then to a whole class of children. The page can be read as a picture of how anxiety, or any frame of mind, passes from parents to children and through a group.
Eye Exam. A confident boy fights, plays football and dances, until an eye test delivers the message on the chart: "LIFE ISN'T WHAT YOU THOUGHT". In glasses, he walks home smaller and quieter and ends up hunched over a desk, which is presumably where a future cartoonist begins.
Alternative Ending. The Hebrew title means "alternative ending". An artist at his drawing table holds a gun to his head, but what bursts out is a shower of colourful sweets. It is a dark-humoured image about creative burnout, and about drawing as a way of turning pressure into something else.
Rêve Lucide. The French title means "lucid dream". A speaker at a podium, whose look appears to echo Martin Luther King Jr., sends out speech bubbles that turn into a white bird; a gun appears, he falls, and only a dark bird is left. The page seems to reflect on how dreams of change are cut short by violence.
Je Suis Charlie. A cartoonist works at his desk with a rifle under it, sweating, with crumpled drawings around his feet. The title is the slogan that spread after the 7 January 2015 attack on the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris, in which twelve people were killed, and the page captures the fear that settled over cartoonists everywhere.
Fallout. In a green-tinted city park, a father and child walk past a bench of elderly people, all of them wearing gas masks, as if this were normal. The Hebrew title means "fallout", and the scene draws on Israelis' long familiarity with civil-defence gas-mask kits and the anxiety of living under threat.
Why The Realist works
Hanuka's method is simple to describe and hard to copy. He starts from something that happened to him, finds one visual metaphor that captures how it felt, and then draws it with complete seriousness. Superheroes, boxing rings and puppets are borrowed from pop culture, but the feelings underneath, tiredness, love, guilt, fear and vanity, belong to everyone. Because he is always the butt of the joke, readers can laugh at the scene and recognise themselves without feeling lectured.
It is worth remembering that the series is one person's view of his own life in Israel, not a portrait of every family or every Israeli. That personal angle is exactly what gives it its warmth. If you enjoy visual metaphors like these, we have also collected other social-commentary illustrations by different artists.
Sources: Comics by Asaf Hanuka, asafhanuka.com and The Realist on Facebook; Wikipedia: Asaf Hanuka; Simon & Schuster: The Realist (Archaia); Publishers Weekly: Asaf Hanuka Goes Beyond Real; Wikipedia: Charlie Hebdo shooting.
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