FEYNMAN contains a lot of pretty high-end physics explained incredibly eloquently in comic form which I found far more digestible than in my excruciatingly boring quantum theory lectures at Uni. You only have to look at EVOLUTION: THE STORY OF LIFE ON EARTH or THE STUFF OF LIFE: A GRAPHIC GUIDE TO GENETICS AND DNA to see how fun comics can make pretty dry subject matter. Nick would like to see us challenge text and I think he has some very interesting points to make about the use of imagery, or lack of it, in academic learning, particularly for children. Thats not his primary aim with this work, but its certainly a useful adjunct. with pictures! Hes preaching to the converted with respect to us comic readers of course, but its another vital piece of work in helping ferment wider discussion about the validity of our beloved medium. What follows is an extremely clever, engrossing and well constructed treatise. Text is by its very nature linear but imagery however is pure connectivity. Its a process he calls unflattening as he shows how images can be used not just to illustrate text, but in all manner of ways of communicating information. So, thus began his investigation of the process of seeing from the perspective of science, art, literature, philosophy and even mythology to examine its specific role in the psychological process of interpretation that goes on in our brains.

In the end he decided this was something he could do a PhD about, the use of image as an equal partner to the mighty word. Nick started submitting his university work for one particular class in the form of comics, which went down so well, he started doing it for other classes too, gradually persuading more and more lecturers and professors to let him do so. Im pretty sure thats not the example Nick Sousanis had in mind when he embarked upon this epic undertaking, but it actually sums up his philosophy quite nicely. We comics lovers know better of course, but what if images really do inform our understanding of pretty much anything just as much as words? Its kind of obvious when you think about it, I mean IKEA have even taken it to a new level with entirely picture based instructions for assembling their furniture, thus doing away with the need for multiple language versions of the same text. In our modern world, it often seems that the word in the king of communication, holding sway over images.