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1
Feynman (2011)
Published
The best first science comic for most adults. Jim Ottaviani and Leland Myrick follow Richard Feynman from a Long Island childhood through the Manhattan Project to the Challenger disaster, and the pranks, safecracking and bongo drums keep it moving between the physics.
What earns it a place here rather than on a biography shelf is that it takes the time to explain quantum electrodynamics, the work that won him a share of the 1965 Nobel Prize with Julian Schwinger and Sin-Itiro Tomonaga, so you come away with the shape of the idea without an equation to solve. It became a number one New York Times bestseller, and it is still the book to hand someone who thinks physics is not for them.
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Logicomix (2009)
Published
The rare comic about mathematics itself. Bertrand Russell narrates his own search for a perfectly secure foundation for math, and along the way you meet Frege, Hilbert, Wittgenstein and Gödel and learn why that search ran into a wall.
Apostolos Doxiadis and the computer scientist Christos Papadimitriou wrote it, with art by Alecos Papadatos and color by Annie Di Donna, and they put themselves in a present-day Athens frame arguing over what the story means. That argument is the clever part: it tells you which ideas are settled and which are still a matter of taste. It works for readers of any mathematical background, though readers who enjoy paradoxes will get the most from it.
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Radioactive (2010)
9.0/10on Open Library
Published
Radioactive: Marie & Pierre Curie, A Tale of Love and Fallout (2010)
Not panels and balloons but something stranger: Lauren Redniss builds each page from her own luminous artwork and text, so the Curies' marriage, their discovery and what radioactivity went on to mean all unfold together. It was a finalist for the 2011 National Book Award, the first work of visual nonfiction to be named one.
Choose it for the atmosphere and the human cost of discovery rather than a step-by-step account of the chemistry; it is a book to linger over, and it reads best for adults who already know roughly what an atom is.
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Primates: The Fearless Science of Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey, and Birute Galdikas (2013)
Published
Field science as it actually happens: years of patience in a forest before anyone will let you close. Jim Ottaviani tells how Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey and Biruté Galdikas were each recruited by the anthropologist Louis Leakey to study chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans, and the three stories overlap so you can compare their very different methods.
Maris Wicks draws in a bright, friendly style that suits younger teens as well as adults, and the book is short enough for one sitting. That brevity has a cost: much of each woman's life and work is left out, so treat it as an inviting doorway rather than the full account.
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The Stuff of Life: A Graphic Guide to Genetics and DNA (2009)
Published
The clearest one-volume tour of genetics in comics. Bloort 183, a scientist from an asexual alien race threatened by disease, has to brief his slow-on-the-uptake leader on how human DNA and evolution work, and that silly frame is exactly what makes it teach well: every explanation is pitched at someone hearing it for the first time.
Mark Schultz writes, and Zander and Kevin Cannon draw cells and chromosomes so you can actually follow them, from the first breeding of crops and animals to modern genetics. It was written as a high-school-level introduction, so readers with no biology since school can keep up; the payoff is a genuine grasp of how heredity works.
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Two-Fisted Science (1997)
Published
Where Jim Ottaviani's science comics began. He self-published this anthology of true stories from the history of science in 1997, and it won a Xeric Award and an Eisner nomination; Feynman, Galileo, Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg all turn up, alongside a cosmologist and several mathematicians.
Because each short piece has a different artist, among them Gene Colan, Colleen Doran, Paul Chadwick and Steve Lieber, it doubles as a sampler of styles, and you can read one story on a commute. Some pieces are funny, some serious, and the best are both. It is the natural next stop for anyone who finished Feynman wanting more.
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Dignifying Science: Stories about Women Scientists (1999)
Published
The companion to Two-Fisted Science, devoted to women in science. Jim Ottaviani's anthology tells true stories of Marie Curie, Emmy Noether, Lise Meitner, Rosalind Franklin, Barbara McClintock, Biruté Galdikas and Hedy Lamarr, each drawn by a different artist.
The lineup of artists is a treat in itself, with Ramona Fradon, Marie Severin, Carla Speed McNeil and Linda Medley among them, and the short format means you can meet a physicist one evening and a geneticist the next. It was nominated for an Eisner Award, and it suits readers who want a breadth of science in bite-sized pieces.
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Suspended in Language: Niels Bohr's Life, Discoveries, and the Century He Shaped (2004)
Published
If you have ever drawn the little solar-system atom, this is the story of the man behind that model. Jim Ottaviani and Leland Purvis follow Niels Bohr through the discoveries that made him one of the founders of quantum physics and through a century his ideas helped shape.
A nice extra is the footnotes, illustrated by guest artists including Jay Hosler, Roger Langridge and Linda Medley, which add a change of style and voice to the main story. It asks a little more of the reader than Feynman does, so it makes a good second book once that one has you curious about the quantum world.
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The Imitation Game: Alan Turing Decoded (2016)
Published
The math and computing pick for readers who saw the film and want the ideas instead of the drama. Jim Ottaviani and Leland Purvis cover Alan Turing's work on computing and artificial intelligence as well as the cracking of the German Enigma during World War II, giving the abstract side of his work as much room as the codebreaking.
Purvis draws in graphite and pigment, which gives the book a quiet, pencil-on-paper look that suits a story about thinking. Pair it with Logicomix, where Turing is one of the thinkers Russell's story reaches; this book shows what he did with those questions.
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Hawking (2019)
Published
A cosmology primer wrapped around a life. The Feynman team, Jim Ottaviani and Leland Myrick, reunited in 2019 for Stephen Hawking, and the book is at its best when it walks through what he actually worked on: the mathematics of white dwarf stars, the expanding universe and black holes.
The cartoon style keeps things light without blunting the explanations, so if A Brief History of Time defeated you, this is a gentler way in. Read it after Feynman to see the same creators tackle a scientist whose work is much harder to picture.
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The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage (2015)
Published
The funniest book here, and one of the best researched. Sydney Padua grew a single 2009 strip for Ada Lovelace Day into a full book, setting Lovelace and Charles Babbage in an alternative universe where they actually built the Analytical Engine and use it to fight crime.
The jokes are the hook, but the real education is in the footnotes and endnotes, where Padua digs deep into the primary sources to explain what really happened. That earned it the 2015 Neumann Prize, given for books on the history of mathematics aimed at a broad audience. Expect to read the notes as eagerly as the comic.
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Trinity: A Graphic History of the First Atomic Bomb (2012)
Published
How physics became a weapon, told in one compact volume. Jonathan Fetter-Vorm wrote and drew this account of the Manhattan Project and the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, starting from the discovery of nuclear fission and following the Los Alamos scientists as they work out how to create a chain reaction.
Seeing that idea drawn is the reason to pick it over a prose history. It then follows the scientists from early patriotism to later guilt, which makes it a strong companion to Feynman, whose own time at Los Alamos looks far more lighthearted on the page.
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The Cartoon Guide to Physics (1991)
Published
The comic to keep beside a physics textbook. Larry Gonick, who studied math at Harvard, wrote it with Art Huffman in 1991, and it does what stories about scientists cannot: it actually teaches the basic concepts of the subject, one cartoon at a time.
The gags carry real definitions, and the drawn diagrams often do more work than a page of prose could. It is closer to a course than a story, so it suits a student revising or an adult willing to work a little; anyone wanting narrative rather than lessons should start with Feynman instead.
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The Cartoon Guide to Chemistry (2005)
Published
A whole chemistry course in cartoons, and a surprisingly complete one. Larry Gonick wrote it with Craig Criddle, a Stanford environmental engineering professor, and the book runs from the history of chemistry and atomic structure through bonds, reactions, and acids and bases to organic chemistry and electrochemistry.
The jokes are there to make bonds, moles and reactions stick, not to replace them, so a reader gets genuine understanding rather than a vague impression. Pick it if you want to finally make sense of the subject you left behind at school, and expect to go back over the early chapters more than once.
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The Cartoon Guide to Statistics (1993)
Published
The math pick for people who need numbers to mean something. Statistics is the branch of math most of us meet in news headlines and medical leaflets, and Larry Gonick and the Temple University statistician Woollcott Smith make probability, sampling, hypothesis testing and confidence intervals visual enough that the logic finally clicks.
Its value is practical: afterward you can read a poll or a study and ask the right questions about it. It covers close to a first college course in statistics, so treat it as the companion to a class or a slow weekend project rather than a bedtime read.
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Clan Apis (2000)
Published
Biology from the inside of a hive. Jay Hosler, a biology professor and entomologist at Juniata College, follows a honey bee named Nyuki as she learns about each stage of her life, and the facts arrive through her story, with plenty of humor, rather than as captions.
It won a Xeric Foundation Award and is the gentlest science comic here, warm enough for a ten-year-old and solid enough for an adult who wants to know how a colony really works. Few books manage to make a reader care about an insect and understand it at the same time; this one does both.
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Coral Reefs: Cities of the Ocean (2016)
Published
Science Comics: Coral Reefs: Cities of the Ocean (2016)
One of the first books in First Second's Science Comics series, and the easiest way to see what that line does well. Maris Wicks, the artist of Primates, uses a little yellow goby as narrator to explain coral polyps, reef biodiversity and why reefs matter, then turns to pollution and carbon emissions.
It is pitched at younger readers, so adults will move through it quickly, but the facts are solid and the cartoons make an ecosystem easy to hold in your head. The series has added many volumes on other subjects, so a young reader who enjoys this one has plenty more to follow.
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The Sandwalk Adventures (2003)
Published
Natural selection, explained by Charles Darwin to a mite living in his eyebrow. That absurd setup from Jay Hosler is a brilliant teaching device: a conversation with someone who knows nothing forces Darwin to explain, from first principles, how life changes over time.
It was nominated for an Eisner Award, and it handles a subject that can feel combative with real kindness, which makes it a good choice for a reader meeting evolution properly for the first time. Pair it with Hosler's later Evolution for the fuller picture.
More about The Sandwalk Adventures19
Evolution: The Story of Life on Earth (2011)
Published
The sequel The Stuff of Life readers should go to next. Bloort 183 is back, this time explaining the evolution of life on Earth to his king and young prince, framed as a royal tour of a holographic museum, and Jay Hosler writes it with Zander and Kevin Cannon drawing.
Hosler brings a biologist's precision, and the book runs from how natural selection works through the long history of life on Earth, so a reader finishes with a timeline in their head, not a pile of facts. Read The Stuff of Life first for the genetics it builds on, or The Sandwalk Adventures for a gentler start.
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Neurocomic (2014)
Published
A neuroscience primer drawn as a dream. Hana Roš and Matteo Farinella both trained as neuroscientists, and they turn the brain's workings into quirky creatures and bizarre landscapes, with famous neuroscientists turning up along the way.
The visual metaphors are the point: an idea like a nerve signal becomes something you can picture and remember, which is exactly what a first book on the brain needs. It was produced in association with the Wellcome Trust and runs from what a neuron is and how it works to how memory functions, by way of neuron forests and castles of deception. Readers who like their science a little surreal will love it; those wanting a tidy textbook order may find it meanders.
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How to Fake a Moon Landing: Exposing the Myths of Science Denial (2013)
Published
Not about one discovery but about how science gets its answers, and how people dodge them. Darryl Cunningham takes on the moon landing hoax, the MMR vaccine scare, climate change, evolution, fracking, chiropractic and homeopathy in short graphic essays, setting out each claim alongside the evidence against it.
That structure makes it unusually useful for anyone who argues with relatives online, and the moon landing chapter leans on the Mythbusters tests of the hoax claims. Some reviewers find the tone preachy in places, and it is essays more than story, but no other book here teaches the habit of checking a claim so directly.
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