The Cartoon History of the Universe
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The Cartoon History of the Universe is an ongoing comic book series by American cartoonist Larry Gonick. The tagline on the individual comic books reads, "History as it really happened—in cartoon format!"
Beginning with volume 1 in 1977, the series is currently expected to cover 26 volumes. Beginning in 1990, Doubleday released collections of the individual volumes in softcover.
All the volumes begin with a stereotypical professor (supposed to represent Gonick, but looking nothing like the cartoonist) preparing to travel in his time machine to whatever place or era the volume is intended to be about. The machine is activated whenever he reads a particular book (e.g. he reads from the Bible for volume 4 about the Old Testament, he reads from Sima Qian's Records of the Grand Historian for volumes 9 & 10 about pre-1st century BC China) and takes the professor to whatever event he's reading about. At the end of each volume, he thoroughly cites his sources.
Collections
- The Cartoon History of the Universe - From the Big Bang to Alexander the Great (Volumes 1-7)
- The Cartoon History of the Universe II - From the Springtime of China to the Fall of Rome (Volumes 8-13)
- The Cartoon History of the Universe III - From the Rise of Arabia to the Renaissance (Volumes 14-19)
- The Cartoon History of the Universe IV (Volumes 20-26, due 2007)