COMICS, EVOLVING!

Two loves of mine (evolutionary biology and comics) seem destined to combine.

First came Jay Hosler, whose tales of social insects (Clan Apis) and Darwin's theorizing (The Sandwalk Adventures) have already deservedly won awards. Jay is an entomologist and a professor of biology at Juanita College who has not only been honored by the comics industry, but by a grant from the National Science Foundation to develop more comics! How 'bout that!


Hosler has also collaborated with Jim Ottaviani, contributing six pages of art to Suspended In Language, Jim's love letter to the life and thought of Niels Bohr. I've posted about Jim's work several times before, most notably when I interviewed him at the 2008 San Diego Comic-Con. Most of Jim's work builds initially off his background as a nuclear engineer, and so he has heavily emphasized physicists. But one of Jim's more recent work unites both historical fact and legends about the woolly days of paleontology (Bone Sharps, Cowboys and Thunder Lizards). A fascinating and multi-layered work, it deserves repeated readings.

But, still, in the year of Darwin you would think that there would be a full-blown 'Darwin comic' brewing somewhere....and you'd be right! As my brother (official 'Fud' holder and comics scholar Charles Hatfield) points out in an e-mail I've just read, Gurr Illustration is about to bring out such a tome. This illustration from their web site is such a tease!


In the meantime, here's a more detailed press release about the upcoming work. Another item I apparently have to add to my reading list! Boy, I hope it's good! I'll post more when I know more, obviously....SH

DON'T MESS WIT' DE KING!

Over at PZ's place, there's a post that attempts to expose another creationist prevaricator. I'm all down with that, but PZ begins his post by referencing a comic book by the visionary Jack "King" Kirby:


OK, HOLD IT. I will put up with a lot of anti-theist crap by you, O Great P-Zeta, but when you go after 'The King', you've gone TOO FAR.

Jack Kirby may have been some sort of theist, but he was no creationist as we might understand it. This selection from Eternals #1 has been taken wildly out of context. In a word, somebody goofed. Summoning my inner geek, here are the actual facts of the matter:

The character of 'Ike Harris' is revealed in the series to be IKARIS, a member of an immortal race of great power and knowledge called 'The Eternals'. Therefore, Ike Harris's allusion to evolution and common descent comes from one who knows, and the 'professor' character who gives him grief for it turns out to an ignorant, pompous twit.

Here's are some actual Kirby riffs on the idea of God, by the way. These are quite a bit off the well-trod path of conventional theism, and marvelously imaginative:

COMIC-CON: THURSDAY MORNING

This was from Thursday morning: the trolley, registration, freebies, hitting the Exhibit floor (it's overwhelming at first!).



I like the guy who is shocked that we came from Fresno, which is really absurd in one sense: there were plenty of people from other countries, after all. No, I think the real shock was that people from Fresno would be so 'cosmopolitan' that they would have a keen interest in comics!