Unflattening (edição 2015)

Dig the concept and ambition, but I think both the art and the "argument/thesis" fall kinda flat. I recommend Asterios Polyp instead. All for more philosophy phd theses being written as graphic novels though! ( )

Every page is a work of art and, as with the best art, often illuminating some idea. It's a bit dense (in a good way!), and as is often the case with me and poetry, I had to read in short bursts so as not to be distracted from the current page by thoughts formed in pages I'd just read. I look forward to returning to it again and seeing connections and ideas expressed in the imagery that I no doubt missed the first time through.

Highly recommended! ( )

Another lazy analog describing that somehow Homo sapiens are unenlightened robots waiting to be free. Scientists have been proving again and again that we are here because of compassion and cooperation. But at least the author concluded the work with a positive vision that learning is the way to be more contributive to the society. ( )

Unflattening is a book-length comics composition--hardly a "graphic novel," since it is a work of non-fiction. Author/artist Nick Sousanis adapted it from his own academic dissertation. The contents are highly reflexive, and consist for the most part of a discussion of parallax and its value in perception, epistemology, social change, and even biology. It is an inspirational book that is entirely free of supernaturalism or speculative "woo." Although its first and primary explanatory paradigm is the hypergeometry intimated by Edwin Abbott's Flatland, Sousanis does not insist on a fourth spatial dimension, only further conceptual dimensions beyond those of the reader's conscious orientation.

Although the book has only eight short chapters, the individual pages are "long." There is an exhibition of parallax in the complementary but non-identical content of the the words and images, a phenomenon explicitly discussed in the course of the book. Part of the "distance" between the verbal and visual contents is the difference in the form of citation. When the text cites a writer (e.g. Buckminster Fuller or George Lakoff), Sousanis mentions the source at the site of the reference. But when the images cite precedent visual sources (e.g. the Mona Lisa or Doctor Who's TARDIS) these are usually just verbally identified in the endnotes, if at all. (There are some exceptions: "after Boticelli," "after Watterson.") One or two pages might be enough for a single sitting, if one "reads" them carefully--attending to the images, reading the words, and reviewing both to see the ways in which they inform one another. The reader should be attentive to the full page as the unit of composition, rather than allowing the gutters between panels to restrict attention. Sousanis emphasizes the value of simultaneity in visual presentation, as opposed to the linear seriality of text.

This volume encodes a lot of valuable concepts, but none of them were really new to me. It expresses an outlook with which I am in sympathy, and it does so in a manner that I think is really admirable.

As he tries to justify comic books/graphic novels/sequential art as a legitimate art form, Sousanis certainly manages to throw in everything and the kitchen sink: history, science, math, philosophy, pop cultural references, and foot tracings. Tying comic books to the obscure classic "Flatland" is simultaneously novel and too on-the-nose. While there are certainly thought provoking passages, it is a bit of a slog. Sousanis tries to keep it interesting by playing with page layouts (reminiscent of Dave Sim's Cerebus dream sequences or the long exposition sections of Alan Moore and J.H. Williams' Prometheus). In the end, all we have here is a more erudite/pretentious version of Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics. It seems to have been a doctoral thesis and is certainly worthy of garnering a degree. ( )