animation, comics, exhibits, events, etc!

We’ve all been quite busy lately. Mr. Murray is working studiously in sunny Pennsylvania; Mr. Dorison recently got married and has his own (NSFW) comic; Mr. M resides far away from us in the precipituousness of Seattle, with a comic of his own; Ms. Babcock and I are both wrestling with the demons of not-too-far-off Ph.D.dom (and she her comic as well); Ms. Schnelbach is furious on her own work, novel, and future plans; and Mr. Gniewek is telling tall tales in other locales at the moment, as well as gearing up for a big move of his own.

Regardless, I feel the need to poke my head around here once more, albeit in a different capacity. Inspired by the illustrious Raina Telgemeier, of Smile, X-Men: Misfits, Comics Bakery, and All-Around Awesome Person, I’ve decided to revive the stagnant SAC Blog to prime myself for the joys of the fantabulous funitude of the “holiday” season. The Telgemeister¹ mentioned on some-or-another social networking site that she is the proud owner of many, many animated Christmas specials. As I do not believe I’ll be viewing many specials this year (due mainly to a drastic uptick in the ratio of work needed to finish my dissertation vs. time left to do so) I feel the need to at least talk about them.²

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Michael Carlisle examines the world “outside” sequential art to find… more sequential art.

I had the distinct pleasure, during a random walk down the aisles of BookExpo America last May, of finding a preview copy of Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth, which is due for release in the US on September 29, 2009.

First, I’ll say that I am overjoyed that this book exists, as it shows that mathematical content can be relayed, and relayed well, in the comics medium. I am also rather frustrated by the existence of this book, as I did not write it myself.

If I was to sadly be scooped by someone on the comic I wanted to write about mathematicians, logic, infinity, madness, world wars, and self-reference, then I would hope it would be by Apostolos Doxiadis (whose Uncle Petros and Goldbach’s Conjecture I’ve read only a portion of but am awaiting the rest) and Christos Papadimitriou (whose Combinatorial Optimization text I used as an undergrad, and will use again when planning a course I’m teaching in the fall).

(Them, or maybe Neal Stephenson. But he’s already done a few things similar to this, in text, for cryptography, calculus, and religion.)

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