I See Your "The Watchmen," and I Raise You "Logicomix"

April 29, 2009 4:42 PM

Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth by Apostolos Doxiadis, Christos H. Papadimitriou, Alecos Papadatos, and Annie Di Donna. Covering a span of sixty years, the graphic novel Logicomix was inspired by the epic story of the quest for the Foundations of Mathematics. This is another kind of epic battle that does not quite lead where the characters thought it would take them. Featuring Bertrand Russell as narrator and the awesome might of the villain (of sorts) Incompleteness. Themes include the high personal price paid for knowledge.
posted by incompressible (24 comments total)

This seems like a potentially great idea for a graphic novel, but isn't a promo website and two Wikipedia articles a little thin for an FPP? Are there more samples of the work itself (other than the disjoint preview panels in the "About" section) available somewhere?
posted by Johnny Assay at 4:53 PM on April 29, 2009 [2 favorites]

Maybe I'm missing it, but I'm not seeing any content here.
posted by bigmusic at 4:56 PM on April 29, 2009

I think the villain, Incompleteness, may have had a hand in this post.
posted by HumanComplex at 4:57 PM on April 29, 2009

You can't prove this is a bad post using only the links in this post.
posted by GuyZero at 5:08 PM on April 29, 2009 [9 favorites]

If this were online to read, this post would be awesome. As it is, it's kinda pepsi blue.
posted by empath at 5:12 PM on April 29, 2009

The English edition is not out yet, but there's a lot of press now because the book was a star at the London Book Fair. I'm excited for it and glad I heard about it.
posted by grobstein at 5:12 PM on April 29, 2009

Hey! This is the first time one of the books I've worked on (though only indirectly in this particular case) has appeared on the blue! Nifty!

My company is putting out Logicomix this Fall. It totally delivers; I was skeptical when I read the initial premise (comics about the history of mathematics?), but the book is fascinating. There are three levels to the story: there's the narrative of the life of Bertrand Russell, there's Russell's discussion of that narrative, and then there's the discussion of the creators of how to make a comic book about those two things.

Maybe I can add a little more substance to this post by offering a galley of the book to the person who MeMails me the most creative 250-words-or-less paragraph about why they should receive a copy of this book. Your deadline is midnight tonight.
posted by ocherdraco at 5:21 PM on April 29, 2009 [3 favorites]

Let's say Pacific Time, by the way (since that's how Metafilter rolls). That gives you approximately 6 and a half hours.
posted by ocherdraco at 5:23 PM on April 29, 2009

That looks totally bizarre, but in a good way.

Presumably more entertaining than the "philosophy for beginners" book, which was actually really useful, but probably had less of a narrative arc.
posted by leahwrenn at 5:43 PM on April 29, 2009

I hope they make me look thin.
posted by wittgenstein at 5:52 PM on April 29, 2009 [3 favorites]

Screw trying to win a free copy. I wanna pay for this mofo!
posted by DU at 6:04 PM on April 29, 2009 [1 favorite]

This reminds me of a punk band I wanted to start called The Vienna Circle Jerks, with songs like Neurath's Boat (Neurath's Boat/Won't stay afloat/It always sinks/'Cause logic stinks) and The Logical Syntax of My Ass.
posted by ornate insect at 6:07 PM on April 29, 2009 [1 favorite]

If this is 10% as good as Dresden Codac it's got my money.
posted by Skorgu at 6:21 PM on April 29, 2009 [1 favorite]

DU, you made my day. Oh, and wittgenstein, don't worry. You look mahvelous, dahling.
posted by ocherdraco at 6:26 PM on April 29, 2009

if there's no glowing blue penis, what's the point..

and, it's "Watchmen" not "The Watchmen"
posted by HuronBob at 6:26 PM on April 29, 2009

Screw trying to win a free copy. I wanna pay for this mofo!

You will pay, even if you get a free copy. High personal cost paid for knowledge and all that.
posted by weston at 7:58 PM on April 29, 2009

I want this, I want this so bad it hurts.
posted by Loto at 8:17 PM on April 29, 2009

Oh, and wittgenstein, don't worry. You look mahvelous, dahling.
So that's the Early Wittgenstein, not the Fat, Vegas Wittgenstein?
posted by GeckoDundee at 9:44 PM on April 29, 2009

I read the comic just last week (it's already been published in Greek) and it was an amazing read. Then I read it again! It's nothing like the "for amateurs" books. It is brilliantly structured, the characters feel as real as it can get, Wittgenstein is thin, drawings and colours are superb. I admit: I'm a huge fan of Logicomix. Don't miss it!

P.S. The author of the comic is Apostolos Doxiadis, author of the international bestseller "Uncle Petros and Goldbach's Conjecture" which is also about mathematics and a veeery good read.
posted by acrobat at 3:36 AM on April 30, 2009

DU, you made my day.

So...do I win?
posted by DU at 4:51 AM on April 30, 2009

We do have a winner (though it isn't you, DU, as you didn't MeMail me an entry!). As soon as I've got the winner's permission, I'll post his entry here.
posted by ocherdraco at 4:54 AM on April 30, 2009

Drumroll, please...

The winner is milestogo, at 226 words and awesome:

Your offer was very fortuitous. You see, I have been working on an ambitious project to formalize the inductive system for comic-panel generation and definition. Under the old orthodox theory, which had been widely employed without justification, each panel in a comic could refer to events and characters from any other panel. I discovered that this (unjustified) convention resulted in a plotline-stopping contradiction if a panel was defined to refer to all panels which were unreferred to. Beloved characters could be believed only when they couldn’t; they lived in inconsistent worlds, and for too long, I was stuck in the mire of conundrum. But, longing for the conclusion of the stories I could no longer bear to read, I began to construct a solution: Principia Comiconia will free the comic world of paradox forever. I propose in this work the theory of Typefaces, where each panel shall be lettered in one of a set of well-ordered font Typefaces, and a panel shall only be permitted to refer to a panel lettered in a strictly lesser font Typeface. In this way, the paradox of the multiverse shall be resolved: all plotlines and panel references that are valid will be deduced from elementary axioms of my system using set-theoretical formation rules. Logicomix will be an excellent candidate for my first-order test of validity within the theory of Typefaces.

posted by ocherdraco at 6:34 AM on April 30, 2009 [1 favorite]

yay! I had a really fun time writing that. Thanks for the prize, ocherdraco. I'll report back on how assuredly excellent Logicomix is.
posted by milestogo at 7:12 AM on April 30, 2009

I think, milestogo, you could really, really have a good shot at writing your own excellent comic.
posted by storybored at 7:41 AM on April 30, 2009