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Underground > Comic Books >

Non-Fiction Comics

18:51 / 11.06.03

I keep having this recurring daydream about setting up in front of the Nordstrom's display window with a bunch of dry-erase markers and a tip jar and giving stand-up lectures on the fun bits of math that don't get taught in school to passers-by. But, this is not especially practical. So, since I've just been looking over Understanding Comics and loving the comics presentation of ideas instead of stories, I was thinking I'd like to take on some kind of math comic as a long-term project.

My specific question, then, is: What non-fiction works should I check out while the idea is gestating? Scott McCloud, Larry Gonick... another thread was talking about Sacco's Jerusalem... what else?

More generally, what's good and bad about a comics presentation of messages and information instead of stories?

19:39 / 11.06.03

Safe Area: Gorazde
Maus, if you haven't read it already
Jessica Abel (of 'Artbabe' fame) did a comic of interviews, but I can't remember its name offhand

19:55 / 11.06.03

you're talk less about non-fiction storytelling and more about educational content, which has nothing to do with the likes of Maus, etc.

there are these great Cartoon Histories of the Universe, i think they're called... those and the Introducing... or ...For Beginners make great use of comics to get ideas across. the Introducing Wittgenstein book, for example, is about as complex as any given work on the subject.

20:15 / 11.06.03

There is a quite sizable chunk of autobiographical comics out there, most notably Harvey Pekar's American Splendor and Al Davison's Spiral Cage As well as Non-narrative comics such as the instructional books Will Eisner did.

There are documentary comics such as Alan Moore and Bill Sienkewitz (sp!) Brough to Light

Outside of that there are thing's like Steve Bissette's Tyrant which is more of a fiction extrapolated from fact similar to walking with dinosaurs.

and then there are Historical dramatizations and biographies such as Ho Che Anderson's King Chester Brown's Louis Riel (based the documentary evidence of the man)

Oh yes, and I should hardly have to mention Art Spiegleman's Maus

yes there is a whole host of non-fiction comics out there

and Erm Joe Sacco's book is called PALESTINE, not Jerusalem.

The Timaximus, The!

20:29 / 11.06.03

I think even in that kind of comic, some form of narrative is important, even if it's as simple as "I'm Scott McCloud and I'm talking to you," or the "History of the Graphic Novel" aspects of Eddie Campbell's How To Be An Artist, or his unfinished History of Humour.

They're not comics, but I'd suggest looking at the dialogues in Hofstadter's Godel, Escher, Bach. Some of the better chapters in the Kabbalah storyline in Promethea (Hod comes to mind) reminded me of GEB. DC/Paradox Press's Big Book Of... series is good. Although a lot of the stories fall under the non-fiction-story/mini-biography category, there are also a lot of non-fiction/non-story comics. Unfortunately, no specific volumes come to mind.

I've not read many, but my problem with the Introducing... or ...For Beginners books is that so many of the ones I've looked at aren't really proper comics, but essays with lots of little illustrations. Even Crumb's Introducing Kafka shared some of this problem.

Oh, and I'd love to read a well-done math theory comic. Good luck with it.

21:52 / 11.06.03

Gah, thanks Sleaze... apparently my nine-letter-word retrieval system is on the blink.

I had the same prejudice against the Introducing...-style series as timaximus, but if the Wittgenstein one is so good, I'll hunt one down. How integrated are the pictures in that one, like, in terms of information-vs-decor?

Dan Fish - @Fish1k

07:21 / 12.06.03

Theres an excellent book by David Chelsea, on how to draw using perspective on amazon here

You could also try instruction booklets from various things, eg. lego, washing machines, condoms.

08:43 / 12.06.03

Ed "Ilya" Hillyer has done a mini-comic about STD prevention. You can get it from UK Health Centres. It's cute!

Think the Jessica Abel comic mentioned above is probably RADIO, which is about the production of This American Life on NPR. Features Ira Glass etc.

I don't know if Eric Shanower's Age of Bronze would count? Although its subject is now the stuff of mythology (the Trojan War), most of his source material is as contemporary to the era as he could find.

Moriarty would have more suggestions, no doubt.

08:58 / 12.06.03

Its a difficult one Age of Bronze is densely referenced, but so are Berlin and From Hell and for that matter my previous example of Tyrant. Each has a varying degree of fictional content to cover over the cracks and gaps between the facts as they assemble their respective naratives.

Obviously some are more fictional than others but at what point does a a documentary become a dramatization and then a mere fiction based on fact...?

12:39 / 12.06.03

Lacan for Beginners, part of the Writers and Readers Beginners Documentary Comic Book series.

They have disciplines and fields of theory (like Poststructuralism) as well as thinkers (like Foucault).

13:07 / 12.06.03

This brings us back to another big contention; what is/are comics?

Looking at McCloud's definition the for beginners style books count because they use pictures and other images in a deliberate sequence... many would disagree

Personally I have a difficult time accepting comics without text, but that's just my own personal prejudice...

15:26 / 12.06.03

Two regular books you need to read if you're seriously interested in this idea are by Rudy Rucker: The Fourth Dimension And How To Get There is about dimension theory and time, with a little bit of hyperspace thrown in. Infinity And The Mind is about mathematical theories of infinity and what they have to say about the bounds of human consciousness and viable models thereof.

Rucker is sometimes lumped with the "cyberpunk" sci-fi authors for works like Software, Wetware and so on. But his best writing is mathematical, including the sci-fi book White Light - a kind of modern day Alice... in which the math prof hero has to climb Mount On, the infinite mountain, all the way to the ultimate infinity to take the soul of a dead girl to Heaven.

The reason I recommend all this is that Rucker does a really great job lining up some fairly tough mathematical concepts in a manner which makes them very palatable for public consumption. I think combining some of his techniques with the approaches that McCloud and Moore have pioneered would be a pretty good recipe for the kind of comic you're after.

Oh yeah, and speaking of Alan Moore, all of his mystical works show a great dedication to using layout, pacing and tempo to convey complex ideas about unusual systems. Whatever you think about the mysticism within them, there are some great storytelling techniques to be found in the Promethea books (esp. vols II and III) and in Snakes & Ladders.