In this volume, he demonstrates his usual combination of winning traits. He can be erudite, especially when treating the history of scientific subjects, such as the ideas of Galileo and Copernicus. He can be irreverent; he titles his chapter on Columbus “Visionary Bungler.” And he can display a madcap sensibility. In a full-page image detailing the proto-globalization of the 1600s, driven by sea trade, he not only shows the expected galleons plying the oceans but also Santa Claus (perched at the North Pole chortling “OBOY! CHEAP TOYS!”) and a flying saucer with space aliens. Gonick seems torn, in a charming way, between aspiring to be the next Carl Sagan and the Mel Brooks of comic books.
Gonick teases out the roots of globalization in chapters such as one called “Going Global,” which primarily depicts Europe’s 16th-century forays into trade and exploration. He skewers the conceits of European countries that presented themselves as speaking for “civilization” (even when their representatives were behaving savagely in Africa, Asia and the New World) and is equally caustic toward the framers of the U.S. Constitution, who ignored the contradictions inherent in allowing “slavery in a republic based on liberty.”
Yet for all the indications that it is a 21st-century creation (including a bibliography that lists Web sites as well as books), Gonick’s latest publication follows strictly in the venerable tradition of comic book as armchair travel guide and time machine. He is indebted to many cartoonists, none more than the wisecracking René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo, who created the wildly popular French series “Adventures of Asterix,” set in ancient Rome. Like Goscinny and Uderzo, Gonick is particularly fond of mocking powerful figures of earlier times (Henry VIII comes across as a buffoon) and of mixing Old World settings with contemporary lingo (Calvin says God isn’t the sort to have a “senior moment”). Gonick’s drawings–like those of Hergé, the creator of Tintin–also give readers a vicarious sense of having visited unusual sites, in this volume rendering Mexico prior to the arrival of Cortes in particularly close detail.
Still, when it comes to the sheer audacity of the lengths to which he seeks to transport his readers, geographically and temporally, Gonick is in a class by himself. Who else could cram into a single book details about Peter the Great’s admiration for the French, the Ottoman Empire’s failure to capture Vienna (and the subsequent invention of the croissant), Jesuit activities in China and Japan, and the Dutch attempts to alter African currency systems? And that’s just on page 233.
As someone who teaches world- history classes that start rather than end around 1800, I just hope it won’t be long before I can read (and think about assigning) the sequels. I’m eager to see how Gonick handles the Industrial Revolution, the movement for female suffrage, the Red Guards and the fall of the Berlin wall. Chances are world history will never look quite so funny.
