Larry Gonick's Graphic Work The Cartoon History of the Universe

In this particular work, the first thing that I noticed, as would most readers, is that the author, Larry Gonick, has chosen to create an illustrated character to narrate the history of the universe, or most of it, anyway. One of the given traits of this illustrated narrator is that he appears to take the point of view of the author immediately, by being given a definition of self by using "I." This character then proceeds to tell the rest of the story. I think that perhaps the author is attempting to persuade the audience to accept his point of view about the history of the universe by putting himself into the story, thereby perhaps creating the illusion that the author is closer to the level of understanding of the reader, thus allowing the reader to feel as though the author isn't the absolute expert on the material he is talking about. I, the reader in this case, had these feelings, but also had the experience of seemingly forgetting that the drawn narrator was even a part of the story, which could have (and perhaps should have) created a distance between me and the narrative, given that the drawn figure was such an important part of my understanding of the story.

But, what happens is that I don't become distant without the narrator present in each panel of the narrative. Rather, what I think happens is that my mind creates the narrator on the page as a sort of God-like voice (or perhaps a voice-over type of character), and even though the narrator isn't physically on the page, the credibility created by the way he was constructed by Gonick through the author's omniscient style of language choices seems to be enough of an effective technique for me not to lose my connection with the narrative. What Gonick does is creates a character who models a teacher or professor-like figure within the narrative, (and even creates dialogue to that effect at one point when he draws a panel in which the drawn narrator is speaking to a large group of apparently young individuals, one of whom actually refers to the drawn figure as "professor") and because of that artistic lean toward education, my student brain seems to find merit in what the narrator is saying, combined with the fact that the narrative's subject material is undoubtedly academic in its content.

As a student, I have discovered that I don't seem to question the individual standing up at the front of the classroom passing along information that I have not yet been educated upon, and I do tend to view the professor as omniscient in the field of study of which I am a part in college. Thus, as a reader, when I read Gonick's text and notice those moments where the narrator sounds more all-knowing, my experiences of following the teachings of my professors lead my mind to believe what the narrator is saying, once a trigger word like "professor" comes up in the panels. My eyes see the word or the character that resembles so closely a teaching individual, and my mind realizes, "Okay, I should pay attention to what the narrator is saying at this point." The author repeatedly engages in these language choices, and while I could simply dismiss his comments on the history of our universe, I do not. Instead, I keep in mind that the information I am given about the origins of things in our universe is information that I have been told time and time again in my own academic experiences, and in my own experiences that information has been studied and much of it proven. Once I take into account that the author hasn't made this information on false pretenses, I am more likely to not question what he writes and the narrator "says."

Furthermore, though, I don't feel as though Gonick's choice to create a narrator was a surprising one, given that Gonick himself had a lot of experience as an educator, experience which he makes a point to tell us and illustrate to us in the opening pages of the narrative, as he talks about how he spent "9 years at Harvard, where [he] studied mathematics" (Gonick 2). His decision to create a character that is drawn to act as a teacher or professor isn't a surprising one, given his own personal background. Once that background is established, the credibility of the ways the information about the history of the universe is passed is much increased.

Interesting, though, is that the drawn character, once the reader examines him within the context of the subject material, bears a striking resemblance to Albert Einstein, with his large moustache and seemingly unkempt hair. I think that perhaps the author could have easily drawn this narrator in many different ways, but something persuades me to believe that this character was drawn to look similar to Einstein. Because I see such a parallel, I, as a reader, am then led to a few other possible conclusions about the ways that this particular narrative might function as I read further. Given that the character seems to resemble Einstein as he does, I think that the author has now strengthened my feelings of ethos toward the illustrated narrator and his subject matter. He looks like Einstein, so therefore my mind is more likely to think what he has to say about the origins and workings of the universe may have more merit.

He becomes an icon, at least in the way that Scott McCloud, author of Understanding Comics, has defined the term. McCloud says that an icon is "any image used to represent a person, place, thing or idea" (McCloud 27). It's not hard to figure out that Gonick's Einstein-like character may be representing the man himself, or even the idea that we think Einstein is, given that he's no longer with us. What does interest me, though, is that McCloud also leans away from the term "symbol" in his own definition, whereas I think that the distinction between Gonick's character and the idea behind a symbol that McCloud gives outside of his definition of an icon. When I think of Einstein, my mind cannot help but think of just his face and how it resembles Gonick's character's own. I think many of Einstein's ideals and knowledge seem to oddly show through in Gonick's narrator. That's why I also can't ignore that perhaps the fact that Gonick uses the teacher-like language choices is either why I envision Einstein almost immediately, or why I feel that there is such a strong connection worth exploring. However, while the resemblance to Einstein is, by McCloud's definition, an iconic one on paper, the danger in thinking that the resemblance means more than it perhaps does lies within the realm of the symbol, which McCloud observes "is a bit too loaded" (McCloud 27), and I would concur in the case of Gonick's narrative. That's where my interpretation comes in, allowing me to see more than perhaps is there, and to easily think of the drawn narrator as being more symbolic, and that may consequentially detract from the author's message if I were to concentrate on that too heavily.

Beyond the presence of the narrator, very early-on, the author chooses to add in elements of humor, often one-liners, usually connected with what object or drawn form has been placed into the panel, as well as to the subject matter. Of particular interest to me, in the context of humor within the narrative is the second section, "The Origin Of Sex." What immediately struck me at the very beginning of this section was how the author talked about sex as a "genetic way of creating and transmitting individual differences within a population" (Gonick 17) AND as the drawn narrator observes, "a way to sell comic books" (Gonick 17). Instead of merely making this observation and then letting it pass, the author then uses it to do several things after this moment in the single beginning panel. First, he illustrates his own point about how sex perhaps "sells comic books" by doing just that: talking about sex in ways he knows will interest readers (many of them could be college-age like me) and thus increase readership. Secondly, using humor in a situation such as Gonick creates might also help readers understand the material just as it has helped me better understand it. What Gonick repeatedly does is to have almost a full page of panels in which his language choices seem to mimic much of the kind of language that a biology textbook might have, be it high school or college.

But, at least one (sometimes two) portion(s) or panel(s) of the page includes the kind of humor I mentioned before, and this brief humor often serves to both entertain the reader, and at the same time provides them with a sudden understanding of what the jargon-like language in the other panels was getting at. In a way, the humor performs a sort of amplification through simplification because it seems to get even MORE to the point than the textbook-style language choices do, because it helps to illustrate the point by eliminating many of the flashy details (like a textbook would include) and precisely gets to the point, almost like slapstick. For example, in one such panel in Gonick's narrative, the narrator is explaining how "sex allowed the development of the higher organisms. Asexual creatures ensure survival by breeding like crazy" (Gonick 19) The panel, to help further this point, shows two dinosaurs (the "higher organisms" at the time), and one says to the other, "How 'bout some sex, Rex?" (Gonick 19). So here, we have a relatively drawn-out statement, made much clearer, and more concise by humor. It is also much more effective when done this way, which is why I think Gonick consistently does it.

To use a comic book in order to pass this kind of information along is an interesting path, and perhaps Gonick relays the information in this way because he knows that readers might be expecting to see humor in a comic book at this time (time within the universe outside the narrative, ironically), since close to the time that Gonick created The Cartoon History Of The Universe, there were still remnants of humor in comics, although the heyday of Donald Duck and Archie was over by the time Gonick's work was published. I think there could be another explanation of why the comic book fits as a vehicle for this story about the universe. If the history of the universe had been told within the pages of a textbook rather than a comic, it may have turned many readers away, if indeed a majority of these readers were young enough to interpret the humorous moments as a younger mind could, because few people read a textbook for pleasure reading, whereas the style in which Gonick has presented the universe's history demands that the reader be on the lookout for humor, and is expected to appreciate it once found. Gonick knows this to be true, which is why he chose the comic format over any other format.

Works Cited

Gonick, Larry. "The Cartoon History of the Universe: Volume 1." New York: Broadway Books, 1997.

McCloud, Scott. "Understanding Comics." New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1994.