For the past 3 years, Nature has produced a full-color comic book as a corollary to the on-air episodes, as an entertaining & educational tool…but we’d like to share them with all of you, at least in digital form. The paper copies of the comic were distributed to museums, schools, and nature centers. The series was edited by David Reisman, and we have all three issues as pdfs at the bottom of this post for you to download and read or print. The above image is from #2, a section of a really great set of panels by R. Kikuo Johnson, who creatively uses the honeycomb as the layout structure–and does some really nice color work.
From #1, a few panels of a story about chimpanzees who grew up in captivity, by Sabrina Jones:
Nature comics introduced me to the work of Lauren Weinstein (trivia: she also used to be the lead singer of the band Flaming Fire), whose work has a marvelously fragile line quality with always visceral content…a nice combination. She’s in all three issues, and here’s a panel from #3, which isn’t even my favorite (her stories/panels in #1 and #2 are lovely, and funny also), but is representative of her drawing style:
Download/read them all here:
Nature Comics #1 (2006)
Cover:
Mark Schultz
Artists:
Rick Veitch
Jonathan Bennett
Lauren Weinstein
R. Kikuo Johnson
Sabrina Jones
Related Episodes:
* In The Valley of the Wolves
* Penguins of the Antarctic
* Chimpanzees: An Unnatural History
Download full comic PDF for #1
Nature Comics #2 (2008)
Cover:
R. Kikuo Johnson
Artists:
Rick Veitch
Lauren Weinstein
R. Kikuo Johnson
Thomas Yeates
Josh Neufeld
Jeffrey Lewis
Related Episodes:
* Silence of the Bees
* In the Valley of the Wolves
* The Beauty of Ugly
Download full comic PDF for #2
Nature Comics #3 (2008)
Cover:
Rick Veitch
Artists:
Rick Veitch
Thomas Yeates
Sabrina Jones
R. Kikuo Johnson
Lauren Weinstein
Hope Larson
Josh Neufeld
Related Episodes:
* The Dragon Chronicles (comic online)
* The Wolf That Changed America (comic online)
* Frogs: The Thin Green Line
Hi, this is a wonderful service to help in distributing these comics (two of which I am a contributor to), but the pdf links for issues #2 & #3 do not work. Can you fix them please? Thx
fixed now!
Is there a way for individuals to get actual hard copies of the comics? My kid would love these.
The first two issues are out of print, but a limited number of Nature Comics #3 are still available. Most are being distributed to kids through their schools (teachers and administrators can order up to 200 free copies for their students). Science museums and nature centers are also distributing Nature Comics #3. A few are available for individual requests, too. To order Nature Comics #3 while supplies last, e-mail guiderequest@thirteen.org.