Comic Relief

Sukumar Ranganathan — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 08:34:00 GMT

Under Cult Non-fiction

And you thought comics were only for the jelly-brained?
Wired magazine has this fascinating article called How comics can save us from scientific ignorance about The Stuff of Life: A graphic guide to genetics and DNA, a comic book on genetics that will also be the first in a series of science comics.
The book is authored by Mark Schultz , a comics writer of some standing.
I think it's a brilliant idea to use comics to explain something.
And it's a lot tougher to do this than it would appear to be. Comics writer and expert Scott McCloud created a comic explaining what Google's browser Chrome was all about Read it here. I've been a long-time fan of McCloud, but have to admit that even he couldn't hold my interest over 38 pages of this comic.
Will the science comics work?
I think they will only if the comics are true to the medium's characteristic of edginess.
Else, they run the risk of becoming this century's Classics Illustrated, or (I am so going to get lynched now) Amar Chitra Katha.
I met Bone's creator Jeff Smith recently (read about it here) and we discussed a bit about both these imprints.
Smith didn't name ACK but said he had seen a lot of Indian comics but that these were the "Ramayana kind of stuff" and not very "trippy". As I wrote in that piece: "According to him some of these remind him of the Classics Illustrated, a 1960s/1970s effort in the US to make classics such as Moby Dick accessible to young people through comics versions."

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A Daily Download : Mark Schultz

Comic Relief