The Hulk's Smartest Enemies Hatch an Intricate Plot!

 

Fall of the Hulks/World War Hulks (2010)

            The life of a former comic book aficionado is a strange one.  I followed the Incredible Hulk comic book for a few years as a youngster, absorbed in the tale of a genius whose altruism causes his transformation into a being of pure, brutish, strength and rage.  One of the joys of comic fandom is that, whenever you jump into a new comic, there are back issues, and former stories, available to discover.  For instance, I relished learning that the Hulk was initially grey, the change to green made for purely illustrative purposes, later retconned into the Hulk’s “evolution.”  Several other people had become “hulks,” altered by the same Gamma energy that Bruce Banner initially experienced, by the time I came to the comic.  Various gamma powered enemies and frenemies appeared in the comic books, each slightly different in some way from the original Hulk.  When I stopped reading the monthly comic, I lost track of the story.

Much later, my ears perked up at tales of a story called Planet Hulk, published in 2006.  Reading that story caught me up somewhat to what had occurred in the Hulk’s world since my fandom days.  After an extra-destructive rampage, ending with the Hulk destroying much of Las Vegas, the smartest heroes in the world (naming themselves the Illuminati) conspired to trick Bruce/Hulk into boarding a rocket.  The rocket launched and sent the Hulk to a planet across the galaxy.  Planet Hulk tells the story of the Hulk, unable to turn back into Bruce Banner, rising from a slave and gladiator to a rebel leader of a worldwide revolution on this planet.  He rules, marries, and sires offspring.  The shuttle that brought the Hulk becomes a monument.  An internal issue causes it to explode unexpectedly, killing the hulk’s bride. The Hulk blames all of this on the Illuminati members who initially banished him, and wages war on Earth and its heroes.  That story is called World War Hulk and has the Hulk and his cronies beat the crap out of everyone in the Marvel universe.  Eventually, the Hulk is beaten via a gamma-power draining weapon, allowing for Bruce’s imprisonment.

This brings us to this story, that of the Fall of the Hulks/World War Hulks.  Using the power drained from the Hulk, various gamma-enhanced super-beings are created, tools for their respective creators.  It is a complex and fun story, which sees the Intelligencia, the cabal of hyper-smart arch-criminals responsible for draining the Hulk’s gamma power, plot and achieve the capture of the smartest minds on Earth.  Initially conceived as a team to help plunder the Library of Alexandria from the Eternals that cared for it, the Intelligencia now sought to utilize the brain power of these geniuses to help compute their evil schemes.  As usual, I will refrain from giving away much of the plot structure.

Their plans and schemes are complex, as suited to such smart villains, and only someone with the brains of Bruce Banner can stop them.  The Hulk has always been a great blend of insane power and destruction at the hands of the Hulk, and brilliant science and humanity coming from Bruce.  It is what drew me to the comic as a youth, and what keeps me checking in every few years to see the amazing stories the good people at Marvel craft.  I recently read the more current Hulk comic of Immortal Hulk, which is amazing.  I look forward to more!

Robert Crumb illustrates the Book of Genesis, and It Rules

 

The Book of Genesis Illustrated – R. Crumb (2010)

 

            I was gifted this amazing book by my brother.  As a life-long fan of Robert Crumb and the big-butt, thick-legged femeninas he obsessively drew and lusted over, I wondered how his obsessive drawing style would lend itself to the stories contained within the Bible’s Book of Genesis.  As with any genius artist, the results are more enjoyable than the actual source material.

            The Book of Genesis is, like the rest of the Bible, a composite.  The stories told within it are drawn from so many ancient sources that the words of Genesis constantly contradict or negate each other.  For example, Genesis tells two different stories about the origin of the world.  In one, god created everything all at once, and seeing it good, created man to rule it all.  In the other version, told right after, god creates the universe bit by bit, day by day, until finally creating man on the 6^th day, and resting on the 7^th.  This contradiction is never explained by the devout, who parrot the Bible as a holy book directly transcribed from the mind of god, infallible in all ways.  These people are idiots, seeking to turn everyone else into the mindless drones they themselves have become. (To read a review of Isaac Asimov’s Guide to the Bible, where he discusses the many source materials for the sections of the Bible, click here: https://rxttbooks.blogspot.com/2014/09/isaac-asimov-tackles-biggest-book-there.html )

            Robert Crumb is a very interesting person to undertake this difficult task.  He was born to a Catholic household, but never sought religion or spirituality after his youth.  In fact, as a devout teenager, his father admitted that the Catholicism he raised the Crumb family under was a lie, and that he was an atheist all along, just pretending at religion.  Robert Crumb’s involvement in the underground comic books of the 1960’s helped make him a seminal figure in the alternative media world.  Nothing in his work of that period showed a predilection toward Bible subjects.

            One of Crumb’s collaborations, the many issues of American Splendor he drew for Harvey Pekar, pointed the way to how his art could serve the needs of a narrative structure.  Harvey Pekar’s work consisted of vignettes, detached scenes of his everyday life.  Crumb drew these scenes in his inimitable crosshatch, but without any of the sensational or outrageous imagery commonly associated with ZAP or WEIRDO comics.  It is this method he employs for the book of Genesis.

            What a beautiful book it is.  Each page, each panel, is carefully structured and drawn, allowing for maximum storytelling.  Crumb draws everything, even the preternaturally dull sections of Genesis listing endless “begets.”  His art does not editorialize.  It does not seek to magnify or diminish the words of Genesis, merely to portray them in a straight-forward manner.  As a life-long fan of the Illustrated Classics comic book series, I felt right at home ingesting the first chapter of the Bible in comic book format.  Those Illustrated Classics were my first exposure to Moby Dick, Robinson Crusoe, Robin Hood, and many other works of literature.  I can imagine this great book serving the same purpose for anyone interested in actually reading the Bible, instead of analyzing it for divine proclamations.  I also see it as a great stepping stone for other comic book artists to explore the canon of classic literature.  Robert Crumb has always kept himself at the leading edge of sequential storytelling art.  We are better off for it.

(The Book of Genesis Illustrated can be purchased here: https://wwnorton.com/books/The-Book-of-Genesis-Illustrated-by-R-Crumb/ )

 

Alan Moore Took Swamp Thing Where It Needed To Go

 

Swamp Thing: Issues #21-64 – Alan Moore, writer (1982-1987)

            In my youth, I was always on the hunt for new and interesting comic books.  I was very fortunate, as the 1980’s were a great time for innovative storytelling and many comic book creators took the art form to new heights of intensity, storytelling, and beauty.  One of the premier writers in comic books at the time was Alan Moore.  His epic story, The Watchmen, is one of my all-time favorites.  An early work that Alan Moore devoted years to in the 1980’s was the comic book Swamp Thing.  After decades, I was finally able to sit and absorb the full run of Alan Moore penned Swamp Thing stories.  They were even better than I expected.

            Swamp Thing has always been a “horror” comic book.  It sprung forth as a monster feature, and was not too popular with readers.  Headed for cancellation, Alan Moore was brought in to breathe new life into the book, and he did so full bore!  Alan Moore retconned the origin story of Swamp Thing.  Originally, Swamp Thing was a man who, after being doused with experimental fertilizer of some sort, found his way to a nearby swamp where he was turned into the Swamp Thing.  Alan Moore changed that up.  Instead of a man becoming Swamp Thing, an earth elemental spirit took on the human shape of the scientist.  Swamp Thing is tasked with protecting the Green, which is in fact, all plant life on the planet.  The horror comes in the many ways humans treat nature and the revenge that Swamp Thing enacts in the name of The Green.

            Alan Moore never shied away from showing the ugly, evil sides of human nature in his work.  With Swamp Thing he was able to explore ideas and topics that in other mainstream or superhero comics of the time would have been taboo.  Alan Moore shows us true evil, true monsters who look human and nice and normal, but who are ugly and sick inside, as opposed to the Swamp Thing, who is a monstrosity that has a hero’s soul inside.  Seeing as how good “spirits” like Swamp Thing exist in this comic book world, it is evident that a lot of evil would exist for Swamp Thing to fight.

            The horrors and monsters that Swamp Thing battles are just one aspect of the comic book.  Just as important is the internal life of Swamp Thing.  Alan Moore’s genius lies in exploring the true self of his characters.  Swamp Thing is conflicted.  He falls in love.  He feels deep sorrow and pain at the way humans treat Mother Nature.  He seeks to understand his place in the cosmos and why he’s tasked with protecting the Green.  The humans and monsters he fights are the opposite, seeking to either destroy nature or to corral it and wield it like a weapon.  I can see why many superhero comic fans did not appreciate this series.  It is too complex and disturbing for someone that just wishes to see didactic good and evil fighting.  What was more surprising to me was how sad, how deeply mournful Swamp Thing is as a book.  Alan Moore’s fears for what the modern world has done to our Mother Nature are evident.

            While much of the Swamp Thing saga is grim and monumental, Alan Moore also finds joy and humor in Swamp Thing and his life.  One of the most interesting issues is a one-off that explores what happens when a tiny ship filled with cute alien beings lands in the Swamp.  They have travelled for centuries seeking a new, lush, green home after their home was destroyed.  Told in a light-hearted and humorous manner, this story nevertheless becomes one of deep sadness and pathos as the small aliens discover the damage that humans have done to the Earth, and decide to leave in search of another home, one that will not soon be damaged irreparably by its inhabitants.  Heavy stuff for a “comic book.”

            I must mention the artwork of Stephen Bissette and John Totleben.  For a horror comic book, the artwork must not only be appropriately scary, but it should lend a specific visual language to the book.  The naturalistic drawing and minimal inking of the artwork used in these comics speak to the content within.  It is a perfect match.  The visuals of Swamp Thing are some of the best of the era, able to portray not only the physical battles that Swamp Thing engages in, but also the psychic and ethereal battles fought on the Astral Plane.  Comic Books are, when done right, a perfect combination of story, words, and images.  This is one of those successes.

            I highly recommend finding and reading the run of Swamp Thing issues that Alan Moore wrote.  If you are already a fan of his, you will get to experience his early work.  If you are not yet a fan of Alan Moore then this is a good place to start as nearly all of the work he has produced since the 80’s contains many of the elements he first explored in Swamp Thing.  From explorations on the metaphysical and mythic nature of existence, to the re-introduction of nearly-forgotten characters from the history of comic books and much more, Swamp Thing is definitely an early Alan Moore triumph.

The Hulk, My Childhood Favorite, Returns to Wreck Shop

 

The Immortal Hulk – Al Ewing, Joe Bennett, et al. (2018-Present)

            I have always loved reading comic books.  Towards the back pages of the comics there would be a list of every title that had an issue printed that month.  There were so many different ones.  Who could read, much less buy, every single one that Marvel or DC Comics would put out?  I eventually settled in on a few that I followed, buying their issues when I could.  These included the Uncanny X-Men, Thor, Batman, and my favorite, The Incredible Hulk. 

            Most people, even those who do not read comic books, know of Bruce Banner and his alter-ego The Hulk.  To many, Bruce Banner and the Hulk are like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, two sides of a coin.  The Hulk is the unseen horror underneath a seemingly normal, and brilliant nuclear physicist that comes out whenever Bruce is angered.  This does not seem like much to base a very long-running monthly comic book on, much less the countless spin-offs of the Hulk throughout all entertainment media, but I found it fascinating and read the Hulk for years.

            The Hulk was different that other superheroes in many ways, not the least of which is in their origin.  Bruce Banner was working on a gamma bomb test when some unsuspecting teenager wandered onto the testing grounds.  He risked his life to run out and save the kid, only to catch the full brunt of the gamma ray blast.  He became irradiated and his body grew to a monstrous size with equal strength.  The Hulk was not Bruce.  He spoke as if he was a child sometimes and Bruce could not control the Hulk “persona.”  Whereas the X-Men were born mutants and outcasts, Batman was orphaned by crime, devoting himself to crimefighting, Thor was a Norse god in charge of protecting Midgard (Earth), and Superman an alien from a destroyed planet protecting his new home, Bruce Banner was a genius damaged and ruined by an act of pure altruism.  It was pitiable, and regrettable, and ended up unleashing one of the most powerful beings in existence to terrorize an unsuspecting world.

            As with all reading habits, I moved on to other comics, and other books.  I would keep up with some of the developments in my favorite comics and really enjoyed the Planet Hulk storyline.  Recently I came across a new series of monthly Hulk books called The Immortal Hulk.  Written by Al Ewing, it was a rebirth of the original horror themes found in the Incredible Hulk, pushed to amazing new heights.   It takes off from the character development done on the Hulk in the recent decades and from the start is written, drawn, and paced to keep the heart pumping and the blood rushing.  I was not ready for the intensity of each issue!  I cannot give away any plot points, as I hate that, but I will say that Bruce lives during the day, while the night belongs to the Hulk, and the story of how Bruce comes back from death sets off the entire run. 

            Each issue builds on the next and the implications for many of the other gamma-powered beings in the Marvel universe come to pass.  It was so cool to catch up on classic Hulk characters that I remembered reading about in my youth.  The artwork is its own type of awesome and reminded me of the best horror comics of the past.  Each page is full of lurid detail.  This is a horror comic, as the Hulk should be, and not a comic book for the little kids.  It may also not be for someone who is coming to the Hulk as a blank slate.  The Immortal Hulk builds upon all previous Hulk lore, which for a comic freak like me, is perfect.  Highly Recommended.

Frank Miller took Daredevil to New Heights/Depths

Daredevil: Gangwar! – Frank Miller (1981)

            These times of pandemic sequestration and isolation give a great opportunity to re-discover old favorites unread for too many years.  While digging through my older comic books I came across Daredevil: Gangwar!, a trade paperback from the mid-1980’s that collected a Frank Miller-penned and illustrated run of Daredevil issues which have since become iconic, and from which much of the current Daredevil lore is drawn, including the interesting but flawed television series of a few years back.

            These issues were published between 1981 and 1982.  Until the mid-80’s it was very uncommon for Marvel to reprint comics as trade paperbacks.  I am glad they did, because it makes for great reading when an entire story arc is bound in one volume.  I found this in a bookstore sometime around 1986, and I remember vividly how brutal and raw the story was compared to the other comic books I read at the time which consisted of large, operatic stories involving whole galaxies or the destruction of the Universe.

Daredevil’s world was much smaller, dirtier, and scary.  It was a gritty dose of realism in a world of archetypal superheroes. I was maybe 13-14 years old, and Frank Miller’s take on Daredevil and the world he inhabits made a big impression.  At the time I did not know who Frank Miller was.  I had yet to read his seminal Dark Knight Returns comics.  All I knew was that the artwork in these Daredevil issues was something visually new, and that the writing was hard-boiled in the extreme.

Daredevil is a local crime-fighter.  He patrols a dilapidated area of New York called Hell’s Kitchen, seeking to protect the vulnerable and innocent from the ravages and horrors to be found in poor and neglected areas of wealthy cities.  He defended them by day in his alter-ego of Matt Murdock, attorney at law.  At night he would use his abilities to do what he could, with the constant knowledge that it was likely a futile effort.

In these comics, Frank Miller expands Daredevil’s scope, and his world, by introducing him to one of the most iconic enemies in the Marvel comics universe, The Kingpin.  Daredevil’s work was largely under the radar of the powerful and amoral Kingpin of Crime, Wilson Fisk.  He was normally concerned with much larger issues and situations than Daredevil.  However, once you come into the sights of someone like Wilson Fisk, there is no turning back. 

Daredevil has always been one of the more morally conflicted superhero titles at Marvel Comics.  He does not have the luxury of flying in, saving the day, and then leaving just as quickly.  He lives where he works.  He interacts with those he protects, and with those he fights, regularly.  He knows Hell’s Kitchen, having grown up there, better than anyone else.  If he cannot help people in his costumed form, he does so as a lawyer.  It is an exhausting life full of morally grey choices.  Gangwar! contains several such dilemmas, and it is to Frank Miller’s credit that his dark take on Daredevil is the one that has stuck in the public consciousness and guided the book for the past decades.  I highly recommend this to anyone who enjoyed the Daredevil TV show but wants to get to the real deal, or for anyone who loves a good hard-boiled, gritty story.

The X-Men battle one of their own in the Dark Phoenix Saga

The Uncanny X-Men: The Dark Phoenix Saga – Chris Claremont & John Byrne (1980)

I cannot remember a time I did not read comic books.  Around 1985 or so, at 12 years of age, I got my hands on this first trade paperback printing of The Uncanny X-Men issues 129-138.  At that time, nearly 4 decades ago, it was rare to find bound re-prints of classic story lines.  I was very fortunate.  I have read this book countless times in the intervening years, always finding it to be deep and very entertaining.  

        My wife, Elizabeth, loves reading but it took until our relationship for her to read many of the great comics I love, such as From Hell, The Watchmen, and especially the full Sandman series.  We enjoy reading them together, although my baritone voice will end up lulling her to sleep mid-page!  As she had never read any X-Men comics, and because I have subjected her to too many superhero movies that rip-off these classic tales, we decided to read this together.

        One of the reasons the classic X-Men comic books are so prized is that the stories told within those pages, while every bit the exciting smash-‘em-ups expected in superhero comics, explored the internal lives and personal relationships of the X-Men superhero team.  Their interpersonal conflicts, emotions, and persecutions were all part of the tale and served to ground these heroes.  Reading a book like the Avengers was much different.  Although they too consist of a team of super-powered beings, the Avengers remained cold archetypes.  Captain America, Iron Man, the Hulk, and the rest, may have had some personal quirks, but the stories never let us into their inner minds.  It took the X-Men to bring personal stories into the superhero genre.

        The story by comics legend Chris Claremont, and the kinetic artwork of John Byrne, was so ahead-of-it’s-time that it has been endlessly copied.  (I could go an at length about the amazing Bill Sienkewicz cover art.  I stared at that for HOURS)  The tale begins with the X-Men exploration of a secret cabal seeking to take over the world while remaining hidden by an outside show of opulence and beneficent work.  These enemies are dealt with in turn, but not before they manage to bring about the return of Dark Phoenix, a being of power and greed who seeks to consume all of existence.  The X-Men’s dilemma is that the Dark Phoenix has manifested herself in the body of Jean Grey, a powerful telepath and one of the original X-Men.  What they do to try and save both her and us from Dark Phoenix is the climax of this story.

        As with any works of fiction, I do not like to give away plot points or anything that may detract from your enjoyment of the story.  If you have seen some of the X-Men films of the past 15 years you will see where the writers of those films cribbed many details from this Dark Phoenix Saga, even while completely ignoring the actual human tale within.  This book has been re-printed many time since.  If you are able to find a copy, you will experience one of the greatest stories ever told in the world of mainstream superhero comic books.  I cannot wait to read it again in a few years.

Grant Morrison ran out of steam before finishing the Invisibles

The Invisibles Omnibus – Grant Morrison (1994-2000)

            The Invisibles Omnibus collects all the issues released of the Invisibles series which ran from 1994 to 2000.  Compiling comic books like this can be an issue as many are created to be open-ended, allowing the story to continue with new writers and artists indefinitely.  In the early 90’s a wave of comic book writers started to break away from the corporate comic book structure, in which anything created is the sole property and responsibility of the parent company.  They wanted to control, to “own” the content they were creating, without having to resort to the comparatively limited publishing and distribution capabilities of small presses and underground publishers.  This allowed some of the industry’s top people to set up deals with the big publishers, where they would hold the rights to the material and essentially have free rein as to what stories they wished to craft, and where the stories would lead to and ultimately end.  Neil Gaiman took this and ran with it in the Sandman series.  Alan Moore did so as well with a sequence of amazing titles.  One of their contemporaries was Grant Morrison, the British writer that penned the entire run of the Invisibles for the Vertigo imprint.

            Both Moore and Morrison are fringe thinkers, interested in the esoteric, occult, and mysterious in the world we exist in.  Both draw from the mass of occult literature and their own personal studies into the weird to write their stories.  Whereas Alan Moore’s work has a serious, intellectual feel to it, as if you are being told a preposterous story by the world’s wisest man, Grant Morrison’s work is like spending a month with a LSD-addled speed-freak who wants to share everything they have heard/seen/read/experienced regarding the Occult and esoteric, and whose narrative cannot be fully trusted due to the disjointed, haphazard nature of his mind.  It is an odd difference, and one which has divided the two writers.

            The Invisibles is an exciting book, for the most part.  It is an interesting tale, for the most part.  It is clever and witty, for the most part.  Perhaps it would have benefitted me to read just one issue’s worth of it every month like comic book fans have to do.  Since I do not have that luxury of time, I had to read it over the course of a month.  The story, like so many others, builds and builds as we meet new characters, explore their lives, both past, present, and future, and discover countless conspiracies, secrets and horrors, until it comes at you like an onrushing tsunami, unstoppable and violent.  It really does “fry your brain” at times with the vast amount of freaky conspiracy and magic, all with double and triple meanings and outcomes. This tempo and intensity are not sustainable in a work of literature of this length.  The book drags heavily around the ¾ mark, and the ending is nowhere near as inspired as the earlier parts of the book.  Perhaps, having aged many years since he began the work, Grant Morrison’s anarchic sensibility was tempered by time and wisdom.  Who knows?  All I can say is that for all the wild information contained within, I do not see how anyone who was not already deeply familiar with the weirdness presented in this book would enjoy the story, which is the standard “secret society exists to fight another secret society, both of which are mortal enemies of each other, or ARE THEY?”  Boring.

            The Invisibles is one of those works where the creator decided to throw everything including the kitchen sink at the page and see what sticks.  While I was entertained mostly, and informed very slightly (I already knew about nearly every aspect of weird that Morrison details in this book), I was left with an empty feeling.  There is no real substance behind this book.  I do not think it will hold up well as the years go by.  It in fact becomes a tedious read toward the latter parts.  Part of this is due to the inability of Morrison to craft an ending as satisfactory and weird as his beginning and middle, and part of it is due to the lack of cohesive focus in the way the story is presented.

            The very best work is crafted by either an individual or by equal partners who see things through from beginning to end.  The Invisibles did not use the same artist for the run of the comic.  In fact, many issues have 4-6 different illustrators drawing the story, which to me distracts from the tale being told.  Art and the decisions made in the process of making Art require purpose, actual purpose.  Neil Gaiman’s Sandman epic did not use the same artist for every tale, but it did use the same artist for all the cover art, and the same artist for each complete “chapter” of the stories.  This adds a cohesion that is absent in the Invisibles.  The book suffers from this greatly.  Comic books are the ultimate combination of Art and Words.  The very best of the genre is created by dedicated teams.  The Dark Knight Returns was a masterpiece, and it was only helped by the fact that the same writer (Frank Miller), artists (Frank Miller, Klaus Jansen), and colorist (Lynn Varley) handled every panel of every page of every issue.  Alan Moore’s The Watchmen also benefitted greatly from the partnership of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons.  Having the artist and the writer share in the design, layout, and creation of any comic greatly improves it.  

            While there are many cool things in this comic, it never captured me, and I never felt any affinity to any of the characters involved.   Much of it seemed overly complex, and disjointed, for no discernible reason.  Every two pages the story flips from one sub-plot to another, creating a very shitty reading rhythm. It’s like Grant Morrison tried to create magic through a comic book and did so purely by regurgitating every single occult and conspiratorial idea he had ever run into, but without the humor and intelligence of The Illuminatus Trilogy for example, or the deep exploration of history found in Alan Moore’s From Hell, a far more disturbing and beautiful book.  Oh well.  Live and learn.  On to the next book.

(This book can be purchased here:  The Invisibles Omnibus  )

Creativity is Found Between What We Think We See, and What We Think We Know

Unflattening – Nick Sousanis (2015)

            What a great idea this book is.  Nick Sousanis has created a comic book about perception and the possibilities inherent in the confluence of image and text that serves as his graduate dissertation.  It is an amazing book.  I only wish I had read it when I was 20 years younger for it would have guided me to new avenues of cognitive exploration.  As it stands, much of the material and the conclusions found within are topics and ideas that I have myself grappled with as I have read more and more on the topics of cognition, identity, creativity, and the nature of perceived reality.

            Sousanis’ main theme is that of perception.  He begins by discussing the classic science fiction story “Flatland” (reviewed by yours truly here).  This story describes the residents of a two-dimensional world, and specifically one resident, a Square, who is visited by a three-dimensional being, a Sphere.  This experience alters the frame of reference for the two-dimensional being who has to expand his mind to understand that the way he and others of his world view their existence and the world around them is but one aspect of the full reality available.  Not only does the Square visit a three-dimensional world, full of spheres, cubes, and pyramids, but he is also shown a one-dimensional world, where all that exists is a solitary Point who imagines himself to be all that can and does exist.  The Point dismisses the reality of his visitors because his perception does not allow for their existence.  The same happens in reverse when the Square notes to the Sphere that if there are three-dimensional beings, then by extrapolation there must be four-dimensional beings.  Of course the Sphere finds this patently impossible, due to his means of perception.

            Sousanis uses this example to help explain how humans are a sum total of all their experiences, leading us to perceive the world as an absolute thing, one that normally does not allow for any differences of viewpoint, and a world in which anything that lies outside of the accepted parameters of “reality” must by its very nature, not exist at all.  Sousanis uses images and text, the makings of comic books, to show that absolutely nothing that we perceive is inherently what we perceive.  For example, what one sees with their right eye is different in every way from what one sees with their left eye.  The image we imagine we are seeing is not reality, but a combination and blurring in our minds of the signals being sent by the two eyes. This ability to see things from two different angles at the same time is a property of animals that have binocular vision, such as humans, eagles, dogs, etc.  Basically, any animal that needs to hunt, to pinpoint spatial locations, has vision that allows them to see and understand perspective.

            It is very difficult for us to step outside of our experience and understand how other creatures experience reality.  Sousanis uses the example of a dog’s sense of smell.  Dogs have the ability to not only detect smells, but they use those smells to differentiate temporal qualities among many other awesome skills.  For example, these differences in smell potency can inform an animal like a dog about whether the squirrels were in this tree this morning, last week, or ten minutes ago.  Their scent world is so much richer than we humans could ever imagine much less experience.

            Sousanis goes on to discuss the fractal nature of reality as it relates to experience and knowledge and the way in which drawing/image making is a sensory tool much more than a tool for exact documentation.  He explores how the combination of art and text can provide explicit and implied meaning, how the opening of the mind to new forms of perception can help create new connections between old ideas and concepts already in our heads, and how drawing and text help engage our minds simultaneously, helping us to have an exponentially more varied and meaningful experience.  He speaks of the importance of imagination.

“Imagination lets us exceed our inevitably limited point of view to find perspectives not in existence or dimensions not yet accessible.” – Nick Sousanis

We do not see/experience images as a whole totality.  Our eyes dart back and forth over different parts, and our imagination fills in the gaps to create the full image in our minds.  This is a never-ending process.  Humans are engaged in it at all points in their life.  Our very eyes, those magnificent organs, can only truly focus clearly on a very small area of whatever we are looking at.  What we think we see clearly is nothing more than an approximation in our minds.  We live our lives mostly on auto-pilot, and this is a good thing, for if we had to re-learn every task and skill every time we needed to do them (such as tying a shoelace, or walking, or driving) we would never accomplish anything.  However, living in this auto-pilot mode restricts us from seeing that the world is not just what we see and experience.  It takes those out-of-the-ordinary moments and occurrences to pull us out of that auto-pilot, and maybe shock our system into growing and learning. 

This is a terrific book and I recommend it to anyone interested in perception and the exploration of how humans interpret the sensory input we receive.  The process of exploration, of understanding and learning, never ends, for once you think you see things clearly what you find is that you actually see the gaps in what you can see.  Those gaps never go away.  The more you learn about anything the more you realize you have yet to learn. This is old wisdom, usually spoken of in very cryptic allegorical terms by mystics and intellectuals, but by using the medium of comic book art, Nick Sousanis has managed to explore this in a new way.  He proposes comic book art, the marriage of text and images, to be the greatest way to open our minds to new perceptions, for our minds fill in the gaps between the text and the images through our imagination.  It is a beautiful thing.  I am not doing the book full justice, for it contains so much more than what I have detailed here.  I highly recommend it.

(To purchase a copy of this book click here:  AMAZON   )