hello everyone so we live in challenging
times we have a planet that’s getting
hot or fast and that should be we have
microbes that are evolving resistance to
our best drugs and we have species
blinking out of existence before we even
get a chance to identify them I’ve had
this idea bonking around in my brain now
for about 44 years as to what we could
do about that and I state it with
absolutely zero hyperbole or
exaggeration in any way shape or form
when I say science comics can save the
world now I know what you’re saying
that’s nuts
you might be right let me see if I can
make my case the story is going to start
1974 a trip out west was a family trip
there were several locations apparently
I remember a big hole in the ground
vaguely there was a mountain that had
four heads carved in it I think but the
truth is there was only one destination
that mattered to me and that was
Dinosaur National Monument at that
moment in my life every thought every
fiber of my being was consumed with a
dinosaurs when we are on our way out we
stopped the famous wall drug in South
Dakota for some free ice water and there
I saw for the first time a spinner rack
and this was a glorious four color
carousel of comics and on that spinarak
there was a spider-man comic and on that
spider-man comic Spiderman was fighting
stag Grande the dinosaur man and there
was a t-rex rearing up behind him and I
knew that I had to have that comic and I
begged for that comic and I suppose that
my parents knew that the 20 cents they
would spend would purchase them five
minutes of silence in the back of our
brown Chevy Impala as we cruised across
the West in that backseat I fell into
that comic it had everything I loved
it had dinosaurs which were science and
science and dinosaurs were sort of
equivalencies in my mind it had
adventure weird characters and at that
time I was had been captivated by comic
strips like peanuts and this was like
comic strips on drugs on steroids
panels all over the place crazy shapes
and colors and as I read that I didn’t
realize it at the time as I said I
realized it 44 years later a little seed
was planted or or maybe it was more like
a parasitic infection that took over my
brain and that idea was that science
comics could save the world well why
does the world need to be saved what
does it need to be saved from I’m sure
we all have our lists and we’ve heard a
number of very important ideas today I’m
a scientist and so that’s my primary
concern so I’ll let Carl Sagan say it
who said it best all right we live in a
society exquisitely dependent on Science
and Technology in which hardly anyone
knows anything about science and
technology science is oftentimes treated
as if some sort of arcane magical world
right and oftentimes the populace feels
disconnected from that world now for
some they can gain access through more
traditional means you know text books
lectures etc but for a lot there’s an
additional gap there an additional step
that has to be made before they can even
feel comfortable accessing those
traditional means what I’d like to
suggest today is that comics can act as
an intermediary a little trampoline
between where they are and where we need
to get in order to help learn enough
about science to solve some of these big
problems now the idea that comics could
play an intermediary role between the
novice and more traditional means of
Education was
sort of crystallized for me by a
cartoonist named gene yang so gene is
the author of american-born Chinese
secret coders
he’s a former computer science teacher
won a whole bunch of awards but probably
most importantly he is won the MacArthur
Genius award so he knows what he’s
talking about
um he was the first I saw talk about
comics as being an intermediate and he
makes two powerful component arguments
there that one of the reasons is this
cause they’re so visual I won’t go into
all the literature that talks about what
visual monkeys we are but we are and all
you have to do is realize the number of
hours you stare at your smartphone to
know this is probably a case the other
thing that comics have is the fact that
they’re permanent so unlike other media
like movies or videos you control the
rate at which you passed or you control
whether you linger for a while on
something that’s challenging whether you
move through something relatively
quickly or whether you can go back to
something you forgot relatively quickly
now in my gut I think I’ve already saw
always sort of known this I don’t really
use slides much in class I prefer to
draw the board and what my gut has been
telling me is that if I draw on the
board my students will draw on their
notes and if they draw on their notes
they’ll understand things better because
for me that’s how I understand the world
to know and I I have to draw an eye I
oftentimes will have my students take a
step even beyond the note-taking
and force them in an uncharacteristic
fashion to tell me a story you have to
write and draw a comic story that
explains as Claudia Mayer does here the
hypothalamic pituitary axis it can be
done as Claudia deftly demonstrated
what’s really exciting is when students
who are no longer in your class who are
taking classes elsewhere and are asked
to draw something decide I’m gonna draw
it but I’m gonna make it a comic and
then I’m gonna show dr. hustler and he’s
gonna take a picture of it and he’s
gonna put it in his TED talk
no I’m not sure Abby had all of that
mapped out when she did this but I was
delighted when she came and showed me
her cartoon explanation of an affinity
column this was a big hit for lab makes
and her to tease right I’m not the first
scientists to suggest images and
pictures are important for learning I’m
not the first educator who has said that
learning is an important and valuable
skill or drawing is an important skill
for learning it’s been around for a long
time so what I am here to talk about is
the idea of comics and I would argue
that scientists have been using comics
for most of the history of science
so here’s Galileo Galilei I sort of
famous here’s his comic about the moons
of Jupiter he goes out one night he
draws a circle right that’s Jupiter –
Asterix four moons then he goes back in
comes out the next night draws the pano
line draws Jupiter two moons
they’ve changed he keeps doing this and
as you move from top to bottom you were
reading a comic and what can you learn
from that comic those moons are moving
that’s a revolutionary idea that cannot
be visualized any other way especially
at that time I’m interesting well that’s
great for communicating science super J
what does that have to do with me
well I would argue that there are times
when you might think comics are
incredibly important so take these crash
instructions for example think about
what their goal is their goal is to
teach you something very important very
fast under highly stressful conditions
that’s college right when a plane is
crashing that is a simulation of the
collegiate experience they don’t pick a
block of text to do that they pick
clearly drawn images to out lay out what
they want you to know
and in fact it’s been the case and
demonstrated ER Doc’s that patients
given wound care instructions so imagine
you walk away from the crash playing
with your big old gaping hole in your
arm and you go to the ER doc if he gives
you or she gives you instructions with
pictures you are twice as likely to care
for that wound appropriately then if
you’re just giving woods this is a hole
in your arm you would think you’d be
highly motivated and for some bizarre
reason pictures make you want to do it
more
but stringing together pictures is
insufficient it’s not enough it’s not
enough to coax that person off the ledge
if they’re not under a plane crash
pressure condition how do we coax them
to science gotta tell him a story today
you’ve heard a bunch of compelling
stories not laundry lists of facts but
stories that have connected you
emotionally my first experience with the
power of stories was after writing and
drawing clan APIs this was my first book
the organism I studied as a graduate
student and as a postdoc was honeybees
so I just wanted to tell a cool comic
story about bees because I thought they
were cool it was no way shape or form my
intent to do an educational comic when I
started going to conventions and meeting
young readers I was blown away by how
much science they had absorbed
internalized but even more importantly
was the fact that they were asking me
higher-order questions questions that
extended beyond what was inside and I
met let’s see it was two years ago at
the smollett press Expo two young ladies
who were in their 20s just finishing up
college came up to my table told me that
her father their father read plan tape
us to them and then they would come back
and read it multiple times and as
they’re talking about it they’re
starting to tear up because they’re
thinking about spoilers here the little
bee that dies now their mid-twenties
they’re they’re there
didn’t we be about a cartoon bee that’s
the only way you get kids to come back
and to read something and to really
learn something and internalize it is if
they care about it now here’s the
problem though from an educational
standpoint I’m a professor I love my
content I want to give up content that’s
terrible idea
everything is important right every fact
is important so if I’m gonna give up my
content I got to know what am I going to
get insane in exchange there are a
couple things that I think are important
the first generally speaking context
character and comedy so I could tell you
there’s a lot of energy and a glucose
molecule I could tell you that you could
take a pile of sugar set it on fire and
you might hold on to that for a while
but that little eight-year-old in the
back of that brown Chevy Impala let me
tell you what he would hold on to for a
long time he would hold on to a story in
which you have a giant glucose molecule
and this little little fly named Wilbur
who’s been warned be careful banku Coast
molecule has a lot of energy and he of
course ignores the warning from Aunt
Edna it’s his little mallet whacks it
with all his might and it blows right up
in his face all that energy released
whoosh and one go and then he is left
standing in the smoldering remains and
coincidentally the co2 and water given
off by the oxidation of glucose right
that’s what the eight-year-old
remembered and you know why because that
ain’t year old would have gone back to
that story time and time again to watch
that glucose molecule blow up and what
he wouldn’t have known is that as he was
doing that he was internalizing that
information this ultimately became the
foundational idea behind a non-majors
comic book textbook that I wrote and
drew so I got a grant from the National
Science Foundation and I constructed
what I hoped would be a textbook that
would act in that intermediary fashion
that we use comics to help bridge a gap
in
non-majors class so the basic structure
of the story was it features wrinkles
the Wonder brain
he’s the lab assistant for the three
grey assisters and his job in the lab is
to shuttle their eye between them he
trips drops the eye in a vat of
distilled human imagination and since
they’re blind without the eye he has to
go in after it he he goes on to have a
series of I related adventures it’s more
exciting than it sounds
and each of which introduces a basic
idea about eye biology ends on a
cliffhanger but before you can get to
that next cartoon chapter there’s a
little pay there’s a little shorter
chapter of text traditional text that
takes the idea that was introduced right
the comics acting as an intermediary
takes the idea that’s introduced expands
on it goes a little deeper and then
allows them to go back to a comic cool
idea did it work
let’s see well to test this what we did
was we took a bunch of students of mine
and I made them buy my book which you
know I’ve lived for that moment as a
professor and I I said okay look this is
what we’re gonna do I’m gonna give you a
pretest before we do this book I’m gonna
ask you your opinion on biology your
opinion on comics and how much you know
about the eye and at the start during
the pretest they hated biology they
hated comics which is heartbreaking and
they didn’t know anything about the eye
okay great
we used the book for two weeks then
after we finished that unit we waited
two weeks and then I came back and I
gave them the same pretest over again to
see if those attitudes and ideas had
shifted whole man number one they
understood the I better which is an
important thing to point out because the
comic didn’t make them more stupid right
you’re laughing
this was actually a major concern of one
of the reviewers for the grant that we
would be dumbing them now but more
importantly their attitude about biology
went up
improved significantly and so did their
attitude about comics and they seemed to
be connected when I asked the students
informally they said yeah I read the
comic chapters a couple times not the
text ones but the comic ones which I
thought was progress right the second
thing that giving up content for makes
room for is a sense of wonder there is a
reason why I spent four years or three
years I felt like four years three years
as a postdoc training bees for five
hours a day sitting in the same chair it
was tedious but it was my tedious it was
the tedious I liked and it was the
tedium I could do because I felt a
certain sense of wonder it’s the thing
that drives scientists so if I want kids
to have a sense of science I have to
give them a sense of wonder to go along
with it so in 2011 I wrote a book I
didn’t illustrate this one and my wife
Lisa says it’s the best looking book
I’ve ever done with Kevin Canon and
Xander Canon and it’s a story about an
alien scientist who’s giving a tour of
of a holographic Museum of Earth
evolution that he has built for his King
and as they’re moving through the
history of life the little eight year
old inside me as I’m writing realizes
that the Mesozoic period is coming up
and so I said in the notes and the
script I said to come in and and Xander
you know this has got to be we’re gonna
turn page seven and there’s gonna be two
pages of dinosaurs and Kevin and Xander
like yes and the editor was like no no
and we said yes and we just said it
louder and the editor said okay so when
you turn that page there is this
glorious image of dinosaurs everywhere
and I have had kids
come up to me it shows and say I look at
that page and I wander around with my
eye and I explore and I see new things
and I ask questions I’d say yes just
like a scientist and they came back to
it time and time again because it filled
them with Wonder so let me wrap up here
I saying a couple things about this
the first is any scientists will tell
you that kids are natural scientists and
any artists will tell you kids are
natural artists and any parent will tell
you kids are natural storytellers but at
some point we make them go to different
rooms to learn these things at some
point we pulled those things apart in
their mind but when they’re young those
things are just three facets of human
creativity the call to action here is
twofold the first is I think publishers
and creators have to start thinking
differently about the way we educate
science I think we have to expand our
definitions to say you know what we can
use fictional elements to explain
nonfiction to excite Wonder the other
thing is that we have to start
encouraging kids to do this now I’ve had
teachers say to me I can’t do comics I
don’t know what they are and I say to
them don’t worry the kids do the kids
will do it they’re not afraid and when
they do put those three elements back
together when we help them do that they
will see the world and understand the
world better they are the ones they’re
gonna save the world and comics can help
them do it thank you you
times we have a planet that’s getting
hot or fast and that should be we have
microbes that are evolving resistance to
our best drugs and we have species
blinking out of existence before we even
get a chance to identify them I’ve had
this idea bonking around in my brain now
for about 44 years as to what we could
do about that and I state it with
absolutely zero hyperbole or
exaggeration in any way shape or form
when I say science comics can save the
world now I know what you’re saying
that’s nuts
you might be right let me see if I can
make my case the story is going to start
1974 a trip out west was a family trip
there were several locations apparently
I remember a big hole in the ground
vaguely there was a mountain that had
four heads carved in it I think but the
truth is there was only one destination
that mattered to me and that was
Dinosaur National Monument at that
moment in my life every thought every
fiber of my being was consumed with a
dinosaurs when we are on our way out we
stopped the famous wall drug in South
Dakota for some free ice water and there
I saw for the first time a spinner rack
and this was a glorious four color
carousel of comics and on that spinarak
there was a spider-man comic and on that
spider-man comic Spiderman was fighting
stag Grande the dinosaur man and there
was a t-rex rearing up behind him and I
knew that I had to have that comic and I
begged for that comic and I suppose that
my parents knew that the 20 cents they
would spend would purchase them five
minutes of silence in the back of our
brown Chevy Impala as we cruised across
the West in that backseat I fell into
that comic it had everything I loved
it had dinosaurs which were science and
science and dinosaurs were sort of
equivalencies in my mind it had
adventure weird characters and at that
time I was had been captivated by comic
strips like peanuts and this was like
comic strips on drugs on steroids
panels all over the place crazy shapes
and colors and as I read that I didn’t
realize it at the time as I said I
realized it 44 years later a little seed
was planted or or maybe it was more like
a parasitic infection that took over my
brain and that idea was that science
comics could save the world well why
does the world need to be saved what
does it need to be saved from I’m sure
we all have our lists and we’ve heard a
number of very important ideas today I’m
a scientist and so that’s my primary
concern so I’ll let Carl Sagan say it
who said it best all right we live in a
society exquisitely dependent on Science
and Technology in which hardly anyone
knows anything about science and
technology science is oftentimes treated
as if some sort of arcane magical world
right and oftentimes the populace feels
disconnected from that world now for
some they can gain access through more
traditional means you know text books
lectures etc but for a lot there’s an
additional gap there an additional step
that has to be made before they can even
feel comfortable accessing those
traditional means what I’d like to
suggest today is that comics can act as
an intermediary a little trampoline
between where they are and where we need
to get in order to help learn enough
about science to solve some of these big
problems now the idea that comics could
play an intermediary role between the
novice and more traditional means of
Education was
sort of crystallized for me by a
cartoonist named gene yang so gene is
the author of american-born Chinese
secret coders
he’s a former computer science teacher
won a whole bunch of awards but probably
most importantly he is won the MacArthur
Genius award so he knows what he’s
talking about
um he was the first I saw talk about
comics as being an intermediate and he
makes two powerful component arguments
there that one of the reasons is this
cause they’re so visual I won’t go into
all the literature that talks about what
visual monkeys we are but we are and all
you have to do is realize the number of
hours you stare at your smartphone to
know this is probably a case the other
thing that comics have is the fact that
they’re permanent so unlike other media
like movies or videos you control the
rate at which you passed or you control
whether you linger for a while on
something that’s challenging whether you
move through something relatively
quickly or whether you can go back to
something you forgot relatively quickly
now in my gut I think I’ve already saw
always sort of known this I don’t really
use slides much in class I prefer to
draw the board and what my gut has been
telling me is that if I draw on the
board my students will draw on their
notes and if they draw on their notes
they’ll understand things better because
for me that’s how I understand the world
to know and I I have to draw an eye I
oftentimes will have my students take a
step even beyond the note-taking
and force them in an uncharacteristic
fashion to tell me a story you have to
write and draw a comic story that
explains as Claudia Mayer does here the
hypothalamic pituitary axis it can be
done as Claudia deftly demonstrated
what’s really exciting is when students
who are no longer in your class who are
taking classes elsewhere and are asked
to draw something decide I’m gonna draw
it but I’m gonna make it a comic and
then I’m gonna show dr. hustler and he’s
gonna take a picture of it and he’s
gonna put it in his TED talk
no I’m not sure Abby had all of that
mapped out when she did this but I was
delighted when she came and showed me
her cartoon explanation of an affinity
column this was a big hit for lab makes
and her to tease right I’m not the first
scientists to suggest images and
pictures are important for learning I’m
not the first educator who has said that
learning is an important and valuable
skill or drawing is an important skill
for learning it’s been around for a long
time so what I am here to talk about is
the idea of comics and I would argue
that scientists have been using comics
for most of the history of science
so here’s Galileo Galilei I sort of
famous here’s his comic about the moons
of Jupiter he goes out one night he
draws a circle right that’s Jupiter –
Asterix four moons then he goes back in
comes out the next night draws the pano
line draws Jupiter two moons
they’ve changed he keeps doing this and
as you move from top to bottom you were
reading a comic and what can you learn
from that comic those moons are moving
that’s a revolutionary idea that cannot
be visualized any other way especially
at that time I’m interesting well that’s
great for communicating science super J
what does that have to do with me
well I would argue that there are times
when you might think comics are
incredibly important so take these crash
instructions for example think about
what their goal is their goal is to
teach you something very important very
fast under highly stressful conditions
that’s college right when a plane is
crashing that is a simulation of the
collegiate experience they don’t pick a
block of text to do that they pick
clearly drawn images to out lay out what
they want you to know
and in fact it’s been the case and
demonstrated ER Doc’s that patients
given wound care instructions so imagine
you walk away from the crash playing
with your big old gaping hole in your
arm and you go to the ER doc if he gives
you or she gives you instructions with
pictures you are twice as likely to care
for that wound appropriately then if
you’re just giving woods this is a hole
in your arm you would think you’d be
highly motivated and for some bizarre
reason pictures make you want to do it
more
but stringing together pictures is
insufficient it’s not enough it’s not
enough to coax that person off the ledge
if they’re not under a plane crash
pressure condition how do we coax them
to science gotta tell him a story today
you’ve heard a bunch of compelling
stories not laundry lists of facts but
stories that have connected you
emotionally my first experience with the
power of stories was after writing and
drawing clan APIs this was my first book
the organism I studied as a graduate
student and as a postdoc was honeybees
so I just wanted to tell a cool comic
story about bees because I thought they
were cool it was no way shape or form my
intent to do an educational comic when I
started going to conventions and meeting
young readers I was blown away by how
much science they had absorbed
internalized but even more importantly
was the fact that they were asking me
higher-order questions questions that
extended beyond what was inside and I
met let’s see it was two years ago at
the smollett press Expo two young ladies
who were in their 20s just finishing up
college came up to my table told me that
her father their father read plan tape
us to them and then they would come back
and read it multiple times and as
they’re talking about it they’re
starting to tear up because they’re
thinking about spoilers here the little
bee that dies now their mid-twenties
they’re they’re there
didn’t we be about a cartoon bee that’s
the only way you get kids to come back
and to read something and to really
learn something and internalize it is if
they care about it now here’s the
problem though from an educational
standpoint I’m a professor I love my
content I want to give up content that’s
terrible idea
everything is important right every fact
is important so if I’m gonna give up my
content I got to know what am I going to
get insane in exchange there are a
couple things that I think are important
the first generally speaking context
character and comedy so I could tell you
there’s a lot of energy and a glucose
molecule I could tell you that you could
take a pile of sugar set it on fire and
you might hold on to that for a while
but that little eight-year-old in the
back of that brown Chevy Impala let me
tell you what he would hold on to for a
long time he would hold on to a story in
which you have a giant glucose molecule
and this little little fly named Wilbur
who’s been warned be careful banku Coast
molecule has a lot of energy and he of
course ignores the warning from Aunt
Edna it’s his little mallet whacks it
with all his might and it blows right up
in his face all that energy released
whoosh and one go and then he is left
standing in the smoldering remains and
coincidentally the co2 and water given
off by the oxidation of glucose right
that’s what the eight-year-old
remembered and you know why because that
ain’t year old would have gone back to
that story time and time again to watch
that glucose molecule blow up and what
he wouldn’t have known is that as he was
doing that he was internalizing that
information this ultimately became the
foundational idea behind a non-majors
comic book textbook that I wrote and
drew so I got a grant from the National
Science Foundation and I constructed
what I hoped would be a textbook that
would act in that intermediary fashion
that we use comics to help bridge a gap
in
non-majors class so the basic structure
of the story was it features wrinkles
the Wonder brain
he’s the lab assistant for the three
grey assisters and his job in the lab is
to shuttle their eye between them he
trips drops the eye in a vat of
distilled human imagination and since
they’re blind without the eye he has to
go in after it he he goes on to have a
series of I related adventures it’s more
exciting than it sounds
and each of which introduces a basic
idea about eye biology ends on a
cliffhanger but before you can get to
that next cartoon chapter there’s a
little pay there’s a little shorter
chapter of text traditional text that
takes the idea that was introduced right
the comics acting as an intermediary
takes the idea that’s introduced expands
on it goes a little deeper and then
allows them to go back to a comic cool
idea did it work
let’s see well to test this what we did
was we took a bunch of students of mine
and I made them buy my book which you
know I’ve lived for that moment as a
professor and I I said okay look this is
what we’re gonna do I’m gonna give you a
pretest before we do this book I’m gonna
ask you your opinion on biology your
opinion on comics and how much you know
about the eye and at the start during
the pretest they hated biology they
hated comics which is heartbreaking and
they didn’t know anything about the eye
okay great
we used the book for two weeks then
after we finished that unit we waited
two weeks and then I came back and I
gave them the same pretest over again to
see if those attitudes and ideas had
shifted whole man number one they
understood the I better which is an
important thing to point out because the
comic didn’t make them more stupid right
you’re laughing
this was actually a major concern of one
of the reviewers for the grant that we
would be dumbing them now but more
importantly their attitude about biology
went up
improved significantly and so did their
attitude about comics and they seemed to
be connected when I asked the students
informally they said yeah I read the
comic chapters a couple times not the
text ones but the comic ones which I
thought was progress right the second
thing that giving up content for makes
room for is a sense of wonder there is a
reason why I spent four years or three
years I felt like four years three years
as a postdoc training bees for five
hours a day sitting in the same chair it
was tedious but it was my tedious it was
the tedious I liked and it was the
tedium I could do because I felt a
certain sense of wonder it’s the thing
that drives scientists so if I want kids
to have a sense of science I have to
give them a sense of wonder to go along
with it so in 2011 I wrote a book I
didn’t illustrate this one and my wife
Lisa says it’s the best looking book
I’ve ever done with Kevin Canon and
Xander Canon and it’s a story about an
alien scientist who’s giving a tour of
of a holographic Museum of Earth
evolution that he has built for his King
and as they’re moving through the
history of life the little eight year
old inside me as I’m writing realizes
that the Mesozoic period is coming up
and so I said in the notes and the
script I said to come in and and Xander
you know this has got to be we’re gonna
turn page seven and there’s gonna be two
pages of dinosaurs and Kevin and Xander
like yes and the editor was like no no
and we said yes and we just said it
louder and the editor said okay so when
you turn that page there is this
glorious image of dinosaurs everywhere
and I have had kids
come up to me it shows and say I look at
that page and I wander around with my
eye and I explore and I see new things
and I ask questions I’d say yes just
like a scientist and they came back to
it time and time again because it filled
them with Wonder so let me wrap up here
I saying a couple things about this
the first is any scientists will tell
you that kids are natural scientists and
any artists will tell you kids are
natural artists and any parent will tell
you kids are natural storytellers but at
some point we make them go to different
rooms to learn these things at some
point we pulled those things apart in
their mind but when they’re young those
things are just three facets of human
creativity the call to action here is
twofold the first is I think publishers
and creators have to start thinking
differently about the way we educate
science I think we have to expand our
definitions to say you know what we can
use fictional elements to explain
nonfiction to excite Wonder the other
thing is that we have to start
encouraging kids to do this now I’ve had
teachers say to me I can’t do comics I
don’t know what they are and I say to
them don’t worry the kids do the kids
will do it they’re not afraid and when
they do put those three elements back
together when we help them do that they
will see the world and understand the
world better they are the ones they’re
gonna save the world and comics can help
them do it thank you you
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