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1963 (1993) |
 | Alan Moore |
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A six-issue series, one of the best of the retro comics out
there. this is Moore's ingenious pastiche of Marvel comics in
the critical (for Marvel and for the world) year 1963. Strange
things... (more) |
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The Adventures of Topology Man (2005) |
 | Alex Kasman |
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Parody is easy....topology is hard!
In this short story, I made use of (and made fun of) the classic superhero comic book genre to illustrate some ideas from topology. So, we end up seeing a battle... (more) |
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The Amazing Spider-Man (Issues 555-557) (2008) |
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| Zeb Wells (writer) / Chris Bachalo (penciller) |
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The issue of Amazing Spider-Man entitled "Sometimes it Snows in April" introduces a disheveled mathematician named Benjamin Rabin who appears to be the victim of an attempted assault. He explains to police... (more) |
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Big Numbers (1990) |
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| Alan Moore / Bill Sienkiewicz |
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This comic book (written by Moore and illustrated by Sienkiewicz) was planned as a 12 issue series with a mathematics theme. Unfortunately, due to a lack of cooperation by the artist (and also a substitute... (more) |
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A Calculated Man (2022) |
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| Paul Tobin (writer) / Alberto Alburquerque (artist) |
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An accountant for the mob, now in witness protection, must defend himself from his former employers, but with the power of math on his side he is quite capable of killing those who have been sent to eliminate... (more) |
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Donald in Mathmagic Land (1959) |
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| Hamilton Luske (director) |
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Disney's Donald Duck takes an adventure to a land where mathematics
"comes alive". (Animated short.)
I used this video in my 6th grade
classroom. The kids enjoyed watching
... (more) |
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Evariste and Heloise (2008) |
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| Marco Abate |
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This contribution to the collection The Shape of Content is difficult to classify. Combining fiction and fact, essay and comic book, fantasy and philosophy, it essentially takes the form of a proposal... (more) |
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Fermat's Cuisine [Fermat no Ryori] (2018) |
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| Yugo Kobayashi |
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This four-volume manga series (also recently adapted as a melodramatic Japanese television series) follows a student named Gaku who has given up on his dream to become a world-famous mathematician and... (more) |
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Geometria dell'apocalisse (1999) |
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| Marco Abate (writer) / R. Bogagni (artist) |
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Italian comic book whose title translates as "Geometry of the Apocalypse".
A (definitely not successful, if I may say so myself) attempt of mixing fractals, impossible murders, racial issues, voodoo gods and the wonderful city of Venice. Remember the city, and forget this story.
Published in
Lazarus Ledd 68, Star Comics, Perugia, 1999, 95 pp (more) |
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Golden Math [Suugaku Golden] (2019) |
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| Kuramaru Tatsuhiko |
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Haruichi Onoda is a high school student who aspires to represent Japan in the IMO (International Mathematical Olympiad). He meets a girl (Mami Nanase) who shares his passion. Though seemingly airheaded,... (more) |
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Hajime's Algorithm (2017) |
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| Mihara Kazuto |
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A bitter old mathematician discovers a young prodigy while visiting the little Japanese island where he grew up in this ten volume manga series that ran from 2017-2020.
Uchida Yutaka is a mathematician... (more) |
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I padroni del caos (2003) |
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| A. Russo (writer) / Esposito Brothers (artists) |
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An Italian comic book whose title translates as "Masters of Chaos".
Not much mathematics in here, but several of the characters are mathematicians. They've better
not talk about mathematics (the writer... (more) |
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L' idée fixe du Savant Cosinus (1899) |
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| Christophe -- Georges Colomb |
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This humorous and profusely illustrated French book is considered to be an early example of what we might today call a "comic book".
Cosinus is a mathematician who
desperately wants to travel around... (more) |
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It was the Monster from the Fourth Dimension (1951) |
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| Al Feldstein |
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I found a story from a Weird Science issue of 1951 (i believe it's # 7) titled It Was the Monster From the Fourth Dimension. It's written and drawn by Al Feldstein.
It is about a farmer whose farm... (more) |
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Kim Possible (Episode: Mathter and Fervent) (2007) |
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| Jim Peronto (script) |
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This episode of the Disney animated TV series "Kim Possible" is a comic book parody featuring a mathematical villain.
As an English assignment, Kim Possible and Ron Stoppable have to write a paper... (more) |
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La formula di Ramanujan (2001) |
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| Marco Abate (writer) / P. Ongaro (artist) |
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A trip from Berkeley to India via Oxford to recover the lost Ramanujan's notebooks, pursued independently
by two (again, realistic) mathematicians, both driven by revenge, though of different kind.
Along... (more) |
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Il Lemma di Levemberg (1996) |
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| Marco Abate (writer) / S. Natali (artist) |
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Published in an Italian comic book, this story (whose title translates as "Levemberg's Lemma") was written by Abate and illustrated by Natali. The author describes it for us as follows:
A (possibly... (more) |
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Let's Play With Numbers [Suuji de Asobo] (2018) |
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| Murako Kinuta |
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The story follows Tateki Yokobe, a freshman in the math department of Yoshida University. Though formerly a top student, Yokobe quickly realises his eidetic memory is of no use in understanding highly... (more) |
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Logicomix (2008) |
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| Apostolos Doxiadis / Christos Papadimitriou |
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A graphic novel on the history of mathematical logic by the authors of Uncle Petros and Goldbach's Conjecture and Turing. In an interview (available online here) Papadimitriou says:
It is really... (more) |
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The Long Chalkboard (2006) |
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| Jenny Allen / Jules Feiffer (Illustrator) |
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Allen's book is a collection of three short-short stories spread
out over book length with illustrations on every page, in the usual
style of children's literature, complete with charmingly simple... (more) |
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The Love Formula (2023) |
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| Giulia Clerici/Giulia Pasqualini |
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this Italian graphic novel contains three different tales of romance. Each one is written to resemble a different geometric relationship between lines and curves: being parallel, being asymptotic, and... (more) |
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The Manga Guide to Calculus (2009) |
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| Hiroyuki Kojima |
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This book attempts to teach calculus concepts and convey their importance to everyday life through the fictional story of a rookie newspaper reporter. She does not initially expect math to be an important... (more) |
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The Manga Guide to Linear Algebra (2008) |
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| Shin Takahashi / Iroha Inoue |
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Reiji wants to learn karate and he is in love with a girl named Misa. So, it works out perfectly when it turns out that her big brother who is the captain of the karate club agrees to let Reiji into the... (more) |
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The Manga Guide to Regression Analysis (2005) |
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| Shin Takahashi / Iroha Inoue |
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Like other books in the "Learn with Manga" series, this one uses romance and manga styling to teach an advanced mathematical subject. Moreover, as in The Manga Guide to Statistics, the main character... (more) |
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The Manga Guide to Statistics (2004) |
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| Shin Takahashi |
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Rui wants to learn statistics not because she is interested in the subject but because she has a crush on Mr. Igarashi, whom she hopes her father will hire as her tutor. When instead her father hires... (more) |
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Math Girls (2007) |
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| Hiroshi Yuki |
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Three high school friends work through some difficult mathematical ideas in this book, recently translated into English from the Japanese original.
The author is apparently well known in Japan for his... (more) |
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The New Warriors (Issue #4) (1990) |
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| Fabian Nicieza (writer) / Mark Bagley (artist) |
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The New Warriors were a team of Marvel superheroes whose enemies included the psychic mathematical genius known as Mathemanic. Mathemanic first appeared in issue #4 (October 1990) but also appeared in... (more) |
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Numbercruncher (2013) |
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| Si Spurrier (writer) / PJ Holden (artist) |
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A recently deceased mathematician "cracks the recirculation algorithm" and thus is able to control his own reincarnation in the hope of being able to spend more time with the woman he loves. It ends up... (more) |
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Off Day! (1953) |
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| Al Feldstein (writer)/ Jack Kamen (artist) |
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Believe it or not, this Weird Science story is essentially a lecture on the law of large numbers.
A very worried college professor tells his class he's just witnessed the failure of one of the most... (more) |
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The Phantom Scientist [Le Chercher Phantôme] (2013) |
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| Robin Cousin |
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This graphic novel takes place at at "The Institute for the Study of Complex and Dynamic Systems", which facilitates interactions between researchers in different disciplines. Although none of the researchers... (more) |
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Prime Suspects: The Anatomy of Integers and Permutations (2019) |
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| Andrew Granville / Jennifer Granville / Robert J. Lewis (Illustrator) |
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In this graphic novel, the surprising coincidences between complete factorizations of integers, permutations, and polynomials is presented as if it were the discovery of a forensic team investigating seemingly... (more) |
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Proof Geometric Construction Can Solve All Love Affairs (2017) |
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| Takahashi Manbou (lyricist) / Ane Manbou (illustrator) |
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This is not a short story or novel or movie, it is a music video by Japanese musician "Manbo-p" (featuring manga-style illustrations by his sister). As the title implies, it is a romance in which a boy... (more) |
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Storm: The Chronicles of Pandarve (1993) |
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| Martin Lodewijk (writer) / Don Lawrence (artist) |
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Storm was a long-running Dutch science fiction comic book series that was also serialized in many English publications.
Mathematics arose in a subplot where the living planet, Pandarve, is distracted... (more) |
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Strange Attractors (2013) |
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| Charles Soule (author) / Greg Scott (Illustrator) |
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This is is graphic novel in which a mathematics student seeks the help of a seemingly insane genius who claims he has been using chaos theory to save the city of New York from disaster for decades.
Heller... (more) |
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The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage (2015) |
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| Sydney Padua |
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This graphic novel starts out as a basically realistic fictionalized biography of the 19th century mathematicians Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage, even if it is a biography with a snarky sense of humor.... (more) |
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To The Power Against (2007) |
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| Carrie Smith (writer) / Stephanie Lantry (Artist) |
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Probability and the number 235 (which appears on each cover, sometimes cleverly hidden) each play a role in this interesting but still somewhat amateurish comic book series from Conjoined Comics.
Our... (more) |
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Train Brains / The Runaway Train (Donald Duck) (1956) |
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| Carl Barks |
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Donald Duck's nephews -- Huey, Dewey and Louie -- are trying to earn a merit badge in engineering for the Junior Woodchucks by working out a complicated problem involving toy trains.
"We'll never be... (more) |
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Tre per zero (1997) |
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| T. Sclavi (writer) / B. Brindisi (artist) |
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An Italian comic book whose title translates as "Three Times Zero".
A very surreal story where a (stereotypical but non-trivial) mathematician "discovers" that
three times zero equal three, and we... (more) |
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Ultima lezione a Gottinga [Last lecture at Göttingen] (2009) |
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| Davide Osenda |
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This beautifully illustrated comic book presents a professor's last lecture to a (nearly) empty auditorium as the Nazi's begin to gather the city's Jews outside. It is perhaps a stretch to call this "fiction";... (more) |
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Who Killed Professor X? (2010) |
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| Thodoris Andriopoulos / Thanasis Gkiokas |
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The famous mathematician Professor X (not to be confused with Charles Xavier) is found dead before his presentation to the International Congress of Mathematicians in 1900, and this graphic novel puts... (more) |
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