Empathy is generally fostered within education, through a variety of materials. Here, we explore how students can use a comic text in upper secondary school to construct empathy towards ‘the other’. The study builds on observations of 91 Swedish students discussing the comic story “Report from Ukraine”. Results show that students construct empathy through ‘otherness’ as being both similar and different to themselves, and how imagery is used to construct this, related to students’ previous knowledge. This is indicative of how comics can engage students in discussions on empathy, relating current global events and issues of ethnicity and otherness.