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.

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.