A Lot Of MCs Like To Use The Word Dramatical

Logicomix, a graphic novel that comes from a group of folks in Greece, constitutes the origin story of the great superhero known to modern readers as Bertrand Russell.

Russell's origin story is a blatant rip-off of the Batman story. While still a small child, Russell's parents are killed by stoicism and Victorian prudence, causing Russell to take up the mantel of logic to combat the evils of warrantless argument and unproven math problems. And just like Batman, Russell takes a pacifist view towards the first world war and falls in love with a co-worker's wife.

In all seriousness, Logicomix is a neat little book that -- through the combined use of pictures and text, a genre known to many as "comics" -- offers up not just the life story of Bertrand Russell (who lived a much more interesting and action-packed life than one might expect) but also an examination of the link between philosophers/mathematicians and madness, all as part of a kind of history of western philosophic thought in the years circa 1880-1950. With a glossary and illustrated examples of some pretty high-concept ideas, it would make for an interesting text for a high school or college-level philosophy course. Except that there's sex and murder in it, too.

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Asterios Polyp is a graphic novel by David Mazzucchelli, who had previously illustrated Daredevil and Batman comics written by Frank Miller, as well as an excellent comics adaptation of Paul Auster's City of Glass. And while there are plenty of graphic novels out there that are really just fatter comic books, this work -- perhaps second to Chris Ware -- works much the way good novels do.

The title character, a former academic architect of Greek descent, is explored in his present, in which he is somewhat driftless and full of loss, and the past that explains how he got that way. Certain sections we explore alongside Asterios, while the flashback sequences -- as such -- are narrated by a twin brother, dead at birth but continuing to lead a kind of shadowed life alongside him. The intertwining of these two timelines and the two Asterios (present and past) is meticulously constructed, such that elements echo back and forth through the story. A common item -- a wristwatch or an army knife -- might first seem to be a detail meant to add texture to an illustration, but later may be revealed as an important hinge to the story. This all adds up to a level of emotional and psychological depth that few would expect from comics work (even though, okay?, such things are pretty common to the form).

As in Logicomix, concepts of architecture, sculpture, music, and dance are wound into the story itself, in ways that allows this text to both teach you and expect you to be familiar with the concepts it explores.

My library didn't totally get that Asterios Polyps' dust jacket is smaller than the book itself, but your bookstore or library may differ.