Science, Comics, and You

I’m working on a thing, guys. A thing about science comics. Note the large gap… I think I got distracted. But I’m back and it is cooking along and I am not going to rethink the whole thing even though my brain wants to. I am just going to finish it. I am trying to do a page a day. If I can finish this by the end of 2024, I will be super duper happy.

Last updated August 16, 2024

What happened? Why this?

This all started because of two things.

1) Awesome ‘Possum

If you somehow don’t know, Awesome ‘Possum is the natural science comic anthology I ran 4 volumes of. You can buy copies from me or even (most) on Amazon. It was a freakin’ blast. I do see a hazy vision of a volume 5, but we will see. Part of this was seeing the cool way people would tackle different information in their works. Great stuff.

2) Wild Wonders

This is an online nature journaling conference that is just so much fun. It is 5 days, 12 hours a day, but you can also watch them after the conference, so you don’t have to blast your brain so hard. One consistent question is “How do I make science comics?!” And I happen to know the answer…

And so

It is fully outlined and mostly written. I am over 33% done drawing it (as of Aug 2024)! I have included some brief (hopefully) comics 101/102 just to get everyone on the same page. This will get complete newbs up-to-date with the necessary terminology and ideas with tips on where else to look. And it will get current cartoonists hip to my language. (Ugh. That sentence made me feel old. Why don’t I delete it?!)

Here is a title page for one of the most important chapters.

For the bulk of it, I talk about how to simply your drawings, how to display data, how to share the story of your data, and a brief starter on how to research your data if you aren’t already the SME (subject-matter expert). There’s probably going to be some media notes in the back (like using watercolor, pen and ink, etc.) as well as some tips on zine making.

There will be lots and lots of original art from me, though weirdly, mostly digital. (I really enjoyed experimenting with ClipStudio throughout this process.) But there will also be lots of examples form the Awesome ‘Possum books! Showing other styles of art, different ways of solving problems, yada, yada, yada.

I don’t yet have permission to share other people’s work, so here is an example of my own marked-up comic from the “Comics 101” chapter. As you can see, it is truly basic information, but it does get us working with the same terminology.