Running head: THE CARTOON HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSE: A CRITIQUE 1
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THE CARTOON HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSE: A CRITIQUE
The Cartoon History of the Universe: A Critique
Champlain-St. Lawrence College
Larry Gonick is a cartoonist who studied at Harvard in mathematics. He has created cartoons since 1970 and he is mostly known for his cartoon named "History of the Universe". In the past 44 years, Larry Gonick has done more than 15 cartoons, many comics trips, some CD-ROMs and he has found the time to teach mathematics and to animate a math show for Square One TV. The objective of this paper is to critique his cartoon "History of the Universe", particularly the part talking about Alexander the Great. I will argue that the information found in Gonick's cartoon is mostly accurate, but there are still some gaps. Some information is not perfect. Some are missing, but in general it looks good, knowing that it is a cartoon and that it cannot be a long text.
I will talk particularly about three things: the conquest of Asia, Alexander the Great's love story and his death.
My first main point is Alexander's conquest of Asia. Gonick talks about Asia during approximately two pages, and that is not a lot since it was a long conquest. However, even if all the information is not necessarily present, the dates are the right ones. At page 349, the author talks about things that happened between 334 B.C. and 330. The fact is that he does not give many details and a lot of things happened during those four years. Gonick talks about Alexander and his army entering Asia in 334 and their conquest of Syria in 333. He also talks about Egypt and Phoenicia falling in 332. For the year 331,