Two-Fisted Science

If I wasn't such an admirer of Richard Feynman, I think I would have been annoyed to no end with this graphic novel. Two-Fisted Science is a 2001 anthology series devoted to anecdotes and historical accounts of some of the world's greatest scientists. Galileo, the eternal rivals Sir Isaac Newton & Robert Hooke and Niels Bohr are featured in this collection featuring the talents of Steve Lieber (Whiteout), Jim Ottaviani (Hawking) and Colleen Doran (Amazing, Fantastic, Incredible: A Marvelous Memoir). But the big star of this book is Feynman!

Two-Fisted Science is 128 pages, plus material on both inside covers. There's an entire section that's over 50 pages long starting Feynman, plus a story that is spread out through the whole book in multiple parts. That means about 75 pages of this book is devoted to the bongo-playing, safe-cracking renegade of the Los Alamos division of the Manhattan project. Over 50% of a book about different scientists through is history is about 1 Nobel Prize winning physicists!

Again, for a fan of Feynman, I don't mind the extra attention on him. But that really throws off the pacing of this book. I think the multi-parter alone would have been just fine to keep things on track. Lots of anthologies do this in order to have a running thread that helps keep readers grounded to the central theme of the collection. Lots of anthologies will also have a single section that might be devoted to just one person or event. Either literary device is perfectly acceptable in the execution of a collected work. But not both. 

Quite a bit of the Feynman material seemed familiar to me. I've read a couple of books about him as well as the Manhattan Project. I had thought maybe that would explain the deja vu. However, upon checking through the archives of this blog, I've discovered that one of the books I've read, Fallout: J. Robert Oppenheimer, Leo Szilard, and the Political Science of the Atomic Bomb, was written and illustrated by a team that featured Ottavini, Lieber and the creator of the segmented Feynman story, Bernie Mireault. I've got a feeling that some of the material of that book was used here. However, I don't own a copy of Fallout, so I am not really sure. But I really think I've read some of this material before!

A very good read. It was just unevenly edited and may have featured material previously published elsewhere. And let's be honest here- isn't that EC Comics homage cover just freaking gorgeous? 

Worth Consuming!

Rating: 8 out of 10 stars.

Hawking

I became a huge fan of Richard Feynman thanks to the 2013 graphic novel work by Jim Ottaviani and Leland Myrick. When I feel like being brainy while getting in a good laugh or two, I play the lectures of Feynman on my computer. It's great background noise when you are surfing the web or updating book reviews. 

This was a guy who was building the first atomic bomb one minute and then sneaking out of Los Almos to play bongos at a local club the next. He was so serious and yet chill. And he was fun as well as funny as hell!

So when Previews announced the release of Ottaviani and Myrick's Hawking, I was first in line for the book. I love Stephen Hawking. I read his manga opus, A Brief History of Time when I was in the fifth grade (for fun; not a requirement.) I've followed Hawking career ever since, enjoying his hilarious appearances on The Simpsons, Futurama and The Big Bang Theory. 

So how was this book? Was it all I hoped it would be cracked up to be? In short- NO!

This book was an almost complete 180 turn from Feynman. While Dr. Feynman was the life of the party, Professor Hawking was a massive stick in the mud. Prof. Feynman was willing to accept concepts that didn't gel with his personal philosophy. Dr. Hawking tries to change those rejected ideas to fit into his view of the universe. But above all, this book was boring!

I was hoping for a more personal look at Stephen Hawking's personal life. His struggle with ALS has been in inspiration for me and countless others. While his personal life is glossed upon, this book was more of a treatise on cosmology and physics.

Only Stephen Hawking can make his insanely complex concepts seem simple. Ottaviani and Myrick are no Stephen Hawking. I literally was bored to tears with this book. It's also why it's taking me up till now to have finally completed this. I had to take breaks in order to overtake the mind numbing!

Sadly, Stephen Hawking also seems to have been a bit of a jerk. Understandably, suffering from something as crippling as ALS is enough to make anyone sour. But way before he started to show symptoms, Hawking seemed a bit of an ass. I really felt sorry for his first wife.

Should Jim Ottaviani and Leland Myrick do a third graphic novel based on a famous scientist, I would read it. It's not exactly that the creative team did a poor job on this. The true life of Stephen Hawking wasn't as enjoyable as the myth the late physicist had built up around himself. But I would recommend that they maybe not spending quite as much time on really difficult physics. It just wasn't as enjoyable read as it could have been as I didn't think that the creators really understood the mind of a master thinker; no matter how tarnished his armor now is in my mind.

Rating: 6 out of 10 stars.

Feynman

   It seems like everywhere I go right now, Richard Feynman is there. From a factual account of the Oppenheimer's involvement in the Manhattan Project (Fallout) to Jonathan Hickman's alternate history of the program in the pages of the Image series of the same name to an article about the strange quirks of famous people on Cracked.com; I just keeping running into Feynman. Why, even his van achieved some notoriety when it appeared on an episode of the Big Bag Theory a couple of weeks ago. It seems that the noted mathematician and physicist has achieved that rare rock star status of Einstein or Hawking in which they are more than science royalty but pop culture icons!

   From my recent readings, including this graphic novel by Jim Ottaviani (who also wrote Fallout) and Leland Myrick, Feynman has become my personal favorite genius (he's also Sheldon's on Big Bang Theory.) Feynman is very down to earth and while he looks at the mysteries of the universe with an analytical mind, he's not opposed to the idea of a creator nor does he claim to know or even understand all of the puzzles of science. 

   From Feynman's odd hobby of picking locks while at Los Alamos to his attempts to join a Carnival krewe in Brazil, it didn't matter if the subject was trivial or not, as long as his continuing self-education exercised his mind it was a subject worth studying for the Nobel Prize winner. This book maps just about every step of Feynman's life, but it's not in linear order. Just as his autobiographies rambled out of sync with his personal timeline, this graphic novel jumps from time period to time period. Thankfully, unlike Hickman's 'Manhattan Projects', Ottaviani and Myrick are keen to inform the reader of the year in which events unfold.

    While I enjoyed the heck out of this book, it was not an easy read. But that's okay. Complexity doesn't have to equal enjoyment. In at least 2 sections of this book, Ottaviani and Myrick place Feynman behind a lectern as his attempts to explain to the reader his award-winning theory on QED. It has something to do with how light particles reflect off of a surface but not at the same time or in the same fashion every time. (Please, don't ask me to explain more because I would be doing a terrible disservice to both the genius behind the theory and to you my loyal blog readers.)

    Even though understanding his groundbreaking theories were not easy for me to accomplish, I am in no way turned off by Richard Feynman or his work. In fact, the author posted an extensive assortment of suggested readings on Feynman that have inspired me to pick up a few in the coming new year. I am particularly interested in his mostly autobiographical works 'Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!' and 'What Do You Care What Other People Think?'

    Feynman is an interesting read that like the physicist himself, challenges the reader to think, expand, and grow with every life experience. Don't be intimidated by scientific jargon in this 2011 work because even the late physicist's didn't have all the answers either. Look at this as a doorway to world of new ideas and when someone says to you that graphic novels are kids stuff, show them one of Feynman's formulas and ask them if they think a 5-year old could solve it or not? 

   Worth Consuming

    Rating: 8 out of 10 stars.

Fallout: J. Robert Oppenheimer, Leo Szilard, and the Political Science of the Atomic Bomb

 

 I figured since I was reading a fictionalized account of the Manhattan Project (The Manhattan Projects, Volume 1) then I would also read a factual account. 

   Man, I wish that statement was true...

   When I checked out the premiere volume of the Manhattan Projects, I had no idea that it starred characters such as Einstein and Oppenheimer. It was just dumb luck that I also checked out this graphic novel about the development of the atomic bomb. But after I read the Manhattan Projects, it made perfect sense to read this next. But I read the fiction graphic novel over a week ago, what took me so long to finish the non-fiction edition?

    Even though Fallout is a graphic novel, it is packed with lengthy excerpts of letters, journals, and official testimonies. And when I say lengthy, I'm not lying. A report on the loyalty of Dr. Oppenheimer was over 8 pages long. Even longer was the notes and 'director's cut' commentary at the end of the book which was over 30-pages long. (It was that section that took me forever to complete.)

   This book starts from the very beginning of the Manhattan project with Leo Szilard employing Albert Einstein to write a letter to President Roosevelt asking him to beat the Nazis to the development of the atom bomb. It then moves to Chicago, where scientists build the first atomic pile underneath a squash court at the University of Chicago. (Imagine the disaster that would have happened if that have overloaded!) Finally, we wind up at the research base in Los Alamos, New Mexico where the first nuke was tested.

    The last half of the book focuses on the fallout of Truman's action to drop the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. When you build a weapon, the natural inclination is to make it better and badder. Thus, the team at Los Alamos is tasked with building the Hydrogen Bomb, which makes the first nukes detonated look like firecrackers. 

    Over time both Szilard and Oppenheimer become repentant over creating the Bomb. Their reluctance to continue building more powerful nukes causes the men to become the subject of investigations over their loyalty to the US. As a result, Oppenheimer is brought before the Atomic Commission and must restore his good name or face becoming blackballed by losing his security clearance.

   Fallout was an eye-opening experience at the development of the nuclear bomb. It was so good, I'm inspired to read and research more about the Manhattan Project. Jim Ottaviani, the book's author, at the end of this book recommends to readers that they should read Maus if they only read another graphic novel about the horrors of World War II (Challenge accepted... Yes, I've never read Maus. But I will now!) Well, aside from that classic, if you want to learn more about the horrors of nuclear war, it's history, and the harsh impact of spending a lifetime working with radioactive materials- then you must read Fallout!

   Worth Consuming

   Rating: 9 out of 10 stars (Only because that previously mention notes section is just so gosh darn long. But that too IS worth reading.)