166 EDUCATIONAL COMICS
Hill & Wang publisher Th omas LeBien, for example, began publishing nonfi ction
graphic novels in 2006 with Th e 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation by Sid Jacobson
and Ernie Colón, which succeeded in both the trade and educational markets. Th at
title was followed by After 9/11, also by Colon and Jacobson, Th e U.S. Constitution by
Jonathan Hennessey and Aaron McConnell, Th e Stuff of Life (about genetics) by Mark
Schultz, Zander Cannon and Kevin Cannon, and more.
Individuals
A number of individuals have played noteworthy roles in the rise of educational
comics. Even a short and incomplete list serves to demonstrate some of the diversity of
educational comics
Th e leftist Mexican cartoonist rius (Eduardo del Río) has been one of the world’s best-
known educational cartoonists. Beginning with his series Los Supermachos (1964 – 68)
and continuing with Los Agachados (1968 –76), rius perfected a super-quick style of
cartooning (using sketchy drawings and pasted-in found illustrations) which enabled
him to research, write, and draw a weekly comic book almost single-handedly.
Some of rius’s infl uence is apparent in the Writers and Readers series of For Beginners
documentary comics, which are cartoon-illustrated, square-bound books, focusing on an
individual (such as Jacques Lacan or Noam Chomsky) or on a topic (such as architecture
or zen.) For example, they published rius’s Marx for Beginners in 1976. Rius’s infl uence
can also be seen in the work of Larry Gonick, the wittiest and most popular specialist in
educational comics working in the United States.
Larry Gonick authored the preposterously ambitious and yet fully satisfying
Cartoon History of the Universe series, and has authored or co-authored “Cartoon
Guides” to various subjects which frequently have been assigned as supplementary
textbooks. His subjects have included genetics, computers, physics, statistics, sex,
and chemistry. Unlike many educational cartoonists, Gonick was attracted to comics’
potential as a nonfi ction medium from almost the beginning of his career in the
1970s. In addition to his comic books and comics-format books, Gonick has also
drawn educational comic strips, comics-format magazine features, comics-format
posters, and storyboards for animation.
Scott McCloud created a very eff ective and infl uential book about how comics work,
written and drawn in comics format, called Understanding Comics (1993.) He followed
it with similar books titled Reinventing Comics (2000) and Making Comics (2006.) His
clients have included Th e National Cancer Institute, Th e Defense Advanced Research
Projects Agency, Th e Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, and, most famously, Google, for
whom he created Th e Google Chrome Comic (2008).
Rick Geary has drawn adaptations of classic literature for the revived Classics
Illustrated series. He may be best known for his specialty in creating comics-format dra-
matizations of famous 19th-century (and, more recently, 20th-century) murder cases,
originally under the title A Treasury of Victorian Murder. Geary’s graphic novels make
outstanding use of many of the visual resources of educational cartooning, seamlessly
