Biographical
Feynman, Hawking, Einstein and others
Written by Jim Ottaviani
Art by Leland Myrick, Leland Purvis, Jerel Dye, and others
If you’re in the mood to familiarize yourself with some of the biggest names in science but would rather not pick up a 700-page tome, a good place to start is with one of the many illustrated scientific biographies by the American writer Jim Ottaviani. Over the years, he and his collaborators have covered the stories of such giants of knowledge as Richard Feynman, Stephen Hawking, Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr, Alan Turing, and others. Each graphic novel serves as a great introduction to its subject’s life: their origins, struggles, achievements, and legacies.
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Credit: Alyona Pastukhova (@detraque) via Pexels (pexels.com)
Thunder & Lightning: Weather Past, Present, Future (2015)
Written and illustrated by Lauren Redniss
This next entry on the list can, in fact, hardly be described as a comic book in the most classic sense of the word. After all, it doesn’t even seem to have a protagonist or a plot! Instead, it examines the whole of human history through weather phenomena. Weather decides the course of wars, tests humanity’s resilience, and shapes the fates of entire civilizations.
Written, illustrated, and even lettered with a specially-designed font by the author Lauren Redniss, it’s not only highly enlightening, but visually stunning, as well. Check it out – and perhaps the next time you’re making small talk about the weather, you’ll be thinking about how it’s not such a small thing after all.
Alternative history
Manhattan Projects (2012)
Written by Jonathan Hickman
Art by Nick Pitarra
Did you enjoy Oppenheimer (2023), but felt that it could have used a bit more mind control, interdimensional travel, and talking dogs? If so, you’re in luck, because Manhattan Projects fits the bill perfectly.
Written by modern comics legend Jonathan Hickman (East of West) and illustrated in an appropriately grotesque style by Nick Pitarra, it is a delightfully insane alt-history romp. If the tagline “SCIENCE. BAD.” doesn’t intrigue you enough, just imagine this: it’s WWII and Robert Oppenheimer (actually his twin brother Joseph, a brain-eating cannibal), Albert Einstein (battle-hardened from years spent in an alternate dimension), and Enrico Fermi (secretly an alien) must defend the Allied nations from teleporting Japanese robots – and that’s just the setup of the first volume! Go in expecting very little historical accuracy and you’ll be pleased.
Credit: János Venczák (@venczakjanos) via Unsplash
The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage (2015)
Written and illustrated by Sydney Padua
Originally, author Sydney Padua was making a true-to-life webcomic about the lives of influential mathematicians Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage. However, a throwaway joke in the final chapter prompted readers to demand an “alternate continuation” – and Ms. Padua obliged.
The story of The Thrilling Adventures… starts when a time-travel screw-up causes the two main characters to be thrown into a “pocket universe” that, coincidentally, lacks both color and a third dimension. You know, just like a black-and-white comic book. Ingenious! The two scientists embark on a crusade against poetry and street musicians, get up to all sorts of whimsical adventures, and dive deep into complex science concepts (there are even accompanying footnotes to explain some of the headiest ideas).
Sci-Fi
FBP: Federal Bureau of Physics (2013)
Written by Simon Oliver
Art by Robbi Rodriguez
What if physical anomalies were as common as rain or wind? Well, there’s one thing we know for sure: even forces of nature are nothing against the sheer power of bureaucracy. In this 24-issue ongoing series from Vertigo Comics, the employees of FBP must deal with wormholes, malfunctioning gravity, and quantum tornadoes while trying to get to the bottom of a galaxy-spanning mystery. If you’re a fan of The X-Files (1993) or Fringe (2008), this one’s going to be right up your alley.
Credit: Wallace Chuck (@chuck) via Pexels (pexels.com)
Sentient (2019)
Written by Jeff Lemire
Art by Gabriel Walta
Fans of the Alien franchise, on the other hand, should find joy (or, rather, horror) in this short series penned by Sweet Tooth creator Jeff Lemire. When a sudden attack wipes out all the adults aboard a colony ship, a group of children are left to fend for themselves – and find their path across the vastness of space – with the help of a harsh-yet-clueless ship AI named Valarie. Both parties will learn much from each other; that is, if they manage to avoid space pirates and other dangers of the cosmos. This is a quite grounded, hard sci-fi story that manages to avoid the pitfalls of mainstream YA fiction and provide quite a few thrills along the way.
For more ways to sate your thirst for science, check out our lists of underrated films about scientists, the top films and shows in the pop-sci genre, and four science documentaries everyone should see.
