Logicomix: From Text to Image/From Logic to Story

Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth is an unusual adaptation. It joins two subjects that are not normally associated: comics and mathematics. By translating Bertrand Russell's search for the foundation of mathematics into the graphic novel medium, Logicomix embraces content that is more commonly found in textbooks. Russell's search for mathematical truth unfolds through a complex network of frames that inspire and inform each other on visual and narrative levels. Russell's appearance at a university lecture and autobiographical account are framed by the reflective exchanges among the four authors of the graphic novel, the writers Apostolos Doxiadis and Christos H. Papadimitriou, and the artists Alecos Papadatos and Annie Di Donna. Their production reveals the extent to which the comics genre is well suited for adapting both story (Russell's life and search) and science (the abstractions of mathematics and logic). Moreover, the particularity of Logicomix supports, in a singular way, the hypothesis that both themes (the autobiographical and the scientific) are situated on a continuum of recognizable (creative) epistemology.

While Rodolphe Töpffer (1766–1847) is generally credited with inventing the comic book genre, visual storytelling has existed for a long time. The Bayeux Tapestries, Trajan's Column in Rome, and Mexican codices all serve as early examples of such visual storytelling. The genre that Töpffer helped create is a particular form of visual storytelling that lends itself to be printed in book form. Despite the long tradition of conveying narratives by using visual means, the comic book genre has been marginalized in the United States, not enjoying scholarly attention until recently.¹ Many scholars agree that the proliferation of visual media such as television, movies, and computers have impacted positively on the popularity of the genre. In their introduction to The Language of Comics, Varnum and Gibbons discuss the "visual turn of our culture" and note that "[t]he balance of power between words and images which, after the invention of the printing press, shifted in favor of the word, seems now to be shifting in favor of the image" (ix).²

One of the most serious and sustained critiques of the comic book genre is that a generally trivial and escapist medium actively contributes to the creation of un-sophisticated illiterates. The psychologist Fredric Wertham noted in his Seduction of the Innocent (1954) that "[c]omic books adapted from classical literature are reportedly used in 25,000 schools in the United States," and that such a claim offers a "serious indictment" of the American educational system (Heer 55). Comic books continue to be juxtaposed to "real" or "good" literature (Versaci 183). However some scholars have begun to exploit the genre's marginality. Rocco Versaci, for example, sees in its marginality the power to explore, surprise, provoke, and, importantly, question the status quo of mainstream media such as literature and journalism (Versaci 134).

Among works that defy the stereotype of the comic book as an escapist medium appealing only to children, one can single out Art Spiegelman's Maus I (1986) and Maus II (1991) as widely known and discussed in a variety of iterations. "In terms of popular conceptions," Versaci writes, "it would be difficult to find two more mis-matched subjects than the Holocaust and comic books, for the latter is commonly regarded as an immature diversion while the former, by contrast, has become frozen in most minds as a metaphor for ultimate evil, so sweeping are its horrors" (82). Versaci and others hold that Spiegelman's treatment of the Holocaust in comic book form contributes to commemorating the tragedy through the medium's unique traits. In particular, Art Spiegelman shows the comic book genre's "potential as a sophisticated literature by extending the elements of two important forms of Holocaust representations: written memoir and photography" (Versaci 83). Instead of being confined to explore the lives and deeds of superheroes, the comic book can now take on complex issues. In addition to Spiegelman's treatment of the Holocaust, other recent graphic novels treat suicide and homosexuality. Making mathematics, a science that is fabled to inspire anxiety in generations...