Refresher: A head mirror is piece of medical equipment that hasn’t been in widespread use for decades. Before modern lights and optics, they were the best hands-free way of looking down a patient’s throat, but there was a definite art to using one. I doubt if more than a handful of readers of this site have actually seen a doctor use a head mirror.

However, despite the fact that they are largely obsolete, head mirrors continue to be used as a sort of graphic shorthand to indicate that a particular character is a doctor. Ask any five year old what a head mirror symbolizes and they’ll tell you “doctor” though they’ve never seen a head mirror, and their parent probably haven’t either. “Head Mirror Theater” is my celebration of this graphic quirk by highlighting the use of head mirrors in comics and pop culture, both old and new. (Here’s a more in-depth post on head mirrors.)