History of the World in Comics

History of the World in Comics is a visual tour of Earth’s past, in a similar vein to Ashley Howard’s Earth Before Us series. Author Jean-Baptiste de Panafieu and illustrator Adrienne Barman follow a similar conceit to Howard’s, with an unnamed paleontologist and storyteller pair taking walking a couple of kids through Earth’s history, from its initial formation through the Anthropocene & beyond. (As a minor point of clarification, this book deals almost entirely in PRE-history, just in case you hold to the “written human record” definition of “history”. The original French title is the somewhat more accurate L’Evolution de la vie, or “The Evolution of Life”.)

The book provides a good overview of the progression of geologic eras, and seeks to provide a broader vision of the past than comparable books like Howard’s or Bonner’s When series. This broader view, possibly also influenced by the more cartoonish art, means it is occasionally somewhat imprecise with what it portrays. For example, it talks about Ornithiscians diversifying in the Jurassic, but portrays End Cretaceous dinosaurs such as Pachycephalosaurus & Triceratops to demonstrate this.

Whether or not it is super strict about where it shows certain species, it DOES portray an impressive diversity of them, including less charismatic ones, from the Paleozoic through the Pleistocene. If I may get especially nerdy for a moment, I was amused to note how one particular obscure species revealed the French background of the books’ creators. On a page on whale evolution where one might typically expect to see the more famous “serpent whale” Basilosaurus, the book instead depicts the very closely-related but rarely-depicted whale Cynthiacetus. While the actual fossils hail from the Americas, a complete skeleton of this extinct whale hang prominently in the natural history museum in Paris, likely inspiring its inclusion in this book.

History of the World in Comics is a decent book for what it is trying to accomplish. In comparison to the few books I’ve reviewed that cover the entire prehistory of earth, it is probably the most comprehensive I’ve seen thus far. By its nature, it goes into more detail than fold-out timelines like A Brief History of Life on Earth (also by a French creator), and while I’m uncertain how much I appreciate Adrienne Barman‘s cartoons, I think I do prefer them to the art in Life: The First Four Billion Years, which may appear more detailed, but is in fact no more accurate to their real life subjects, which can give a false impression of rigor as opposed to Barman’s clear caricatures. I might recommend Fossils From Lost Worlds (also a French product) over History of the World in Comics, though. While it focuses more on the history of paleontology itself (and in somewhat more detail than another science history comic, Dinosaurs: Fossils and Feathers), it does still cover much of the same content, and I feel a little more enthusiastic about recommending it. If you happen to come across any of these books, though, feel free to tell me if you have a different opinion on my rankings!