Radiant Comics

I’m back from the comic shop this week and I got two new comics plus a hard cover collection:

And now for a review of something I’ve read recently.

“Logicomix” by Apostolos Doxiadis and Christos H. Papadimitriou with art by Alecos Papadatos and Annie DiDonna

A little while ago I was given a gift certificate to Barnes and Noble so off I went to the store to see what they had. After looking through many sections of the store I decided to go with this graphic novel “Logicomix”. Though it is from 2009, has “New York Times Bestseller” on the front cover, and the back cover is filled with praise from many mainstream publications I had never heard of it before. It looked good and had an interesting premise so I bought it.

The subtitle to this book is “An Epic Search for Truth” and is the story of early 20th Century logicians and mathematicians as they search for an entirely rational system of logic to help them examine the world. Though there are a lot of characters in the book it is mainly the story of the renowned philosopher Bertrand Russell. Though I am familiar with his name I didn’t know much about him.

The story is told mainly from the point of view of Russell giving a lecture at an American college (Russell is English) just before the US’s entrance into World War Two. Some people at the lecture want America to stay out of the war and some want them to join in and fight the Nazis. Russell’s lecture mainly consists of him telling the story of his life and his lifelong search for a way to answer such questions based on a truthful logic system.

There are also a series of framing sequences wherein the creators of this book give us the story of them creating the book as they hash out some of the finer points of the work and world of early 20th Century logicians and mathematicians. They call upon a current logician to go over their work and tell them if they’ve gone off course. This allows for them to explain some parts of logic that may need a little more clarity, go over some of their more controversial conclusions, and have a little self critique. It works well as a technique.

Though it reads as a bit of history the authors state that they had to take some liberties to make it work as a story. They didn’t mess with any of the philosophical ideas but they did have people who never met in person meet and interact. That and they certainly couldn’t include everything that happened in Russell’s life.

I really liked this book. I liked that it was about people and big ideas. They did an excellent job telling the story. The art is in a style that I haven’t seen a name for just yet. It’s a graphic, single line weight, cartoony yet without a lot of exaggeration style that I’ve seen before but can’t think of where. I guess it’s a “Tin Tin” kind of style but a little less adventurous. The color is lush and well done. I think I can describe the overall storytelling as “Breezy” which is kind of amazing being that the book is about math, logic, and philosophy. Not the breeziest of subject matter.

So here you go. Do you like history? Biography? Philosophy? Quests? Questioning? I know I do and this book brought me those things and more. Give it a read.