Department of Mind-Blowing Theories

January 20, 2020
Gauld (Baking with Kafka) turns out this fizzy collection of one-panel cartoons, originally drawn for New Scientist magazine, showcasing his charmingly simplified art and brainy, gently off-kilter comic sensibility. In Gauld’s landscape, the Department of Experimental Geography is at the top of an M.C. Escher staircase; a space probe scheduled to be shut down goes through the five stages of grief; and the Quantum Cartoon is “simultaneously funny and unfunny.” A reference to Professor Larson nods to the influence of the Far Side, but Gauld’s sense of funny is its own blend: half the erudition of New Yorker cartoons (where he is also a contributor), half the scrappy out-and-proud nerdiness of Internet memes. (One character interrupts an insufficiently sophisticated gag by crying, “Sir, this is an erudite science cartoon!”) His slight, dot-eyed characters, frequently drawn in silhouette for maximum anonymity, are barely more than stick figures, but they inhabit detailed backgrounds carefully filled with elaborate machinery and fanciful patterns. Cartoons that assume an equal understanding of nanobots and the Arts and Crafts Movement are, by design, not for everyone. But fans of smart science-boosting comics like the web-based xkcd—and actual scientists, of course—will grin.

April 1, 2020

British cartoonist Gauld (Baking with Kafka) celebrates and lampoons the agony and ecstasy that accompany a life devoted to scientific research in this collection of 150 strips, which originally ran as a weekly feature in New Scientist. In "Suggested Methods of Presenting Findings," he pitches far-out approaches such as "a Broadway musical" and "an internet meme involving cats." Another strip depicts two researchers at the bottom of a deep pit deciding not to dig any further, unaware that a vast trove of ancient artifacts lay mere inches below their feet. When he's not speaking directly to scientists, Gauld presents absurd situations with a bone-dry delivery reminiscent of The Far Side. Standouts in this vein include a strip featuring two insects trapped in blobs of amber catching each other up on how they've been keeping themselves busy for the last 48 million years, and a look at the inner monolog of a dog philosopher considering what it really means to be "a good boy." VERDICT Gauld's intelligence and wit permeate every page of this clever volume.

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