Tag: science

#587 Science in a comic: Dialogue about “The Dialogues”

This is the story of a very unusual project: a 250-page comic showing people talking about science. Not your cup of tea? Actually, the seeming lack of overlap between “comics people” and “science people” is part of this story. It was one reason this book took nearly two decades from inception to publication.

In this episode, Ryan Haupt joins Tim to review this book, called The Dialogues; then, the book’s author, USC physics professor Clifford V. Johnson, explains the arduous journey of this book, which explains a topic that’s poorly understood by the public via a medium that’s also poorly understood by the public.

Also including some actual science talk, including Ryan’s recommendations for other non-fiction comics about science!

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#406 Aya Rothwell, Comics Anthropologist

Aya RothwellHaving grown up with feet planted firmly on both sides of the Pacific, Aya Rothwell has always been observant of cultural differences, and this shows up in her comics. Who else would do a comic about a human visitor to an alien world, with the biggest conflict being that the human keeps getting the aliens’ names mixed up?

Aya also fills us in on using watercolors in her comics, her journey to comics via the worlds of biology and film, and more.

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#375 “The Manhattan Projects”: Is science bad?

manhattanprojectsThis week, another comic involving science — Jonathan Hickman and Nick Pitarra’s The Manhattan Projects — and thus another visit from comics-and-science-loving podcaster Ryan Haupt! He and Tim speculate on the meaning of Hickman’s tag line “Science. Bad.”, examine which parts of the story are fact and which are extrapolation from fact (or just plain made up!), some facts that Hickman got wrong, and more. Plus: how can the writer of such a wacky book turn around and write such dark, funless Avengers stories?

Read issue-by-issue analysis at Multiversity Comics

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#363 The Science of “RASL”… sort of

RASLAfter Jeff Smith finished his fantastic all-ages series Bone, he went a completely different direction with his next series: a noir/sci-fi hybrid called RASL. It’s a great story on a human level, but it also gets into quantum physics, the lost journals of Nikola Tesla, and and some real-life pseudo-science conspiracy theories like the Tunguska Event and the Philadelphia Experiment.

Helping us dig more deeply into these elements of the story is a guest co-reviewer with solid footings in both comics and science: Ryan Haupt, an earth scientist in his own right and host of the podcast Science…Sort Of, but also a contributor to iFanboy and Marvel.com. Tim and Ryan also look at RASL as a comic, examining the many story points that Smith leaves vague, and the philosophical questions the story raises.

The Very Large Array

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