I get a lot of books and such sent to me, and I rarely have time to look them over. It’s a blessing and a curse, I guess. I want to see what everyone else is doing, but I’m doing too much to look!
But I got an email from James Dunbar, asking if I’d look over his rhyming verse comic book called BANG! The Universe Verse. He made it easy, since there’s a small version online I could look through.
I like it! It describes the Big Bang model using simple terms, and goes through the timeline breezily, making it easy to read. Someone unfamiliar with the science will get a passing familiarity with it from reading this, and enough info to go online and find out more.
And if you are familiar with the science, you might get a kick out of the drawings anyway. I really liked this one:
Clever use of visual similes, with the iris resembling an explosion.
BANG! is freely available as an e-book, and you can ping him if you want a PDF. He also sells a bound copy for $10, which is pretty reasonable given he’s self-publishing it.
He’s a talented guy, and I hope he can do more stuff like this. I wonder how many kids he can inspire to get more interested in science?
April 19th, 2010 at 2:48 pm
This is totally yoinked for my middle school Astronomy class next year. It’s awesome that he gives teachers permission to reproduce his materials.
April 19th, 2010 at 3:45 pm
LOVE it. That is so cool.
April 19th, 2010 at 3:45 pm
Excellent find! Thanks so much. I will SO pimp this work to my educator friends. What I’ve seen on his site ensures that he’s getting my money for the printed version.
April 19th, 2010 at 4:48 pm
This is a really cool idea! I really hope his amazing work gets kids into astronomy! Also I would say that he’s used visual metaphors, not similes! Similes are where two things are compared using the phrases, “as” and “like” whereas metaphors on the other hand compare two different things by being described as the object its been compared to.
April 19th, 2010 at 6:11 pm
Great job! I’ve emailed to ask whether he will ship to the UK, as I’d love to get a copy of this for my son to read.
I wonder what topics the sequels will cover.
April 19th, 2010 at 7:03 pm
Wow. That was great – I think I’ll have to buy myself a copy of that.
April 19th, 2010 at 9:51 pm
A man that can stitchup both science and art!
Snows dream of a world that should not be apart.
A world full of Fact.
A world full of Art
Dr Seuss is Dr who’s brother, Raarrrrrr! xD
April 20th, 2010 at 1:34 am
Nice.
April 20th, 2010 at 1:47 am
Great idea – I love it & hope to do something similar myself one day.
April 20th, 2010 at 2:27 am
You can ping him??? please. Can you do a DNS lookup of him? Idiots in suits say things like “ping me!” meaning email thinking it makes them look technically literate and it just makes me want to slap them. Please have some standards!!!!! (You can stagecoach me a reply sometime…)
April 20th, 2010 at 8:16 am
“You can ping him??? please. Can you do a DNS lookup of him?”
Yes:
running ping on jldunbar.com|4|1
PING http://www.l.google.com (72.14.204.99): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 72.14.xxx.xx: icmp_seq=0 ttl=54 time=4.868 ms
64 bytes from 72.14.xxx.xx: icmp_seq=1 ttl=54 time=5.252 ms
64 bytes from 72.14.xxx.xx: icmp_seq=2 ttl=54 time=4.988 ms
64 bytes from 72.14.xxx.xx: icmp_seq=3 ttl=54 time=5.836 ms
— http://www.l.google.com ping statistics —
4 packets transmitted, 4 packets received, 0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 4.868/5.236/5.836/0.373 ms
April 20th, 2010 at 8:37 am
Andrew #10,
It’s entirely possible that BA’s use of the word “ping” is a sonar-based metaphor, not an IP-based one. I know that’s how I usually use it…
April 20th, 2010 at 9:23 am
I’m getting this for my nephew, I’ve been trying to boost his science curiosity for most of his life.
April 20th, 2010 at 3:38 pm
I couldn’t help noticing that even thought the male half of the duo was intended to look like Albert Einstein, he bore more than a passing resemblance to Fat Freddy, of the old Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers comics.
June 1st, 2010 at 9:12 am
[...] Comic BANG! (blogs.discovermagazine.com) [...]