Feynman (2011)

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.