{"id":2130,"date":"2016-01-03T21:04:21","date_gmt":"2016-01-04T05:04:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/?p=2130"},"modified":"2016-01-03T21:04:21","modified_gmt":"2016-01-04T05:04:21","slug":"review-logicomix","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/?p=2130","title":{"rendered":"Review: Logicomix"},"content":{"rendered":"

Logicomix<\/em> is the kind of grand experiment I like to see in comics. The creators, Apostolos Doxiadis, Christos Papadimitriou, Alecos Papadatos and Annie Di Donna, approach a mature theme thoughtfully with thorough research and the intent to tell a human story.\u00a0 There are no capes or supernatural powers to be see.\u00a0 This is non-fiction or at least topical exploration with sound research behind it.\u00a0 Through such experiments is the form advanced.<\/p>\n

Their topic is the advancements of math and logic in the early part of the 20th century, primarily centered on the work of Bertrand Russell, and how those inform logic as a tool for living a reasoned life.\u00a0 It’s a fertile set of ideas driven by an interesting set of eccentric characters.\u00a0 This is a great story to tell.<\/p>\n

I think they miss a bit on the execution.\u00a0 The first problem is one of taste.\u00a0 They back into the story slowly with a few instances of “well,we’ll tell you about that later.” I understand teasers, and that not every story starts dynamically. In this case I think that because they’re wading into waters that threaten to be abstruse they should grab the reader as quickly and directly as possible.\u00a0 As I say, this is an issue of taste.\u00a0 They opt for a slower ramp up and more discursive overall style.\u00a0 Not a choice I advocate, but not offputting.<\/p>\n

More troubling is that large parts of the story never become visually interesting.\u00a0 The characters are deep thinkers and their work is in the most abstract areas of mathematics, but there has to be a way to involve the reader more visually.\u00a0 If not, a comic is probably the wrong media to tell the story.\u00a0 There are many pages of Logicomix<\/em> that are literally panels that are half characters head and half speech balloon.\u00a0 I think that’s largely a waste of the power of the comics medium.<\/p>\n

This reads as a pretty negative review, but overall Logicomix<\/em> works to tell a thought-provoking story in a novel way.\u00a0 I don’t think they were entirely successful, but I think the experiment is worth a look.\u00a0 I certainly learned from it and was inspired by it.\u00a0 Don’t let my faint (or non-existent) keep you away.\u00a0 It is worth reading.<\/p>\n

Recommended.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Logicomix is the kind of grand experiment I like to see in comics. The creators, Apostolos Doxiadis, Christos Papadimitriou, Alecos Papadatos and Annie Di Donna, approach a mature theme thoughtfully with thorough research and the intent to tell a human story.\u00a0 There are no capes or supernatural powers to be see.\u00a0 This is non-fiction or […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2130","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2130","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2130"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2130\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2134,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2130\/revisions\/2134"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}