Charles Darwin's on the Origin of Species

1. This is part biopic of Charles Darwin, part visual adaptation of Darwin's Origin of Species, and part survey of evolutionary theory. Why do you feel this book needed to be written now?
Our understanding of the mechanisms governing life, health and the amazing diversity of organisms on Earth has entered a new stage of growth. Computers and increasingly powerful equipment are probing the very machinery of how biology works and a torrent of new research reinforces our understanding of evolution and the process of natural selection. It is an exciting time to look back upon the foundations of evolutionary biology and consider how prescient Darwin was and what a gifted eye he had for seeing how the natural world operates. Yet, though there is so much new information being collected and analyzed-microscopically; theoretically; through field and lab work; in anthropology, ecology and population studies; through research in genetics and evolutionary development; using computational models; and by studying the lives of microorganisms, birds, plants, mammals and insects- many people are unaware of the beauty of science's explanation. Darwin is an excellent starting point for the public to begin to conceive of all the lines of investigation that converge into a holistic picture of life on Earth. But in many high schools and universities, there is no requirement to read the Origin of Species. It is both one of the world's great ideas, which points humanity to its place in the universe, and a member of the English language's literary canon. It should be a standard part of the reading list in the sciences and the humanities. We hoped that our project would help our audience focus on the clarity and beauty of the original author's words.

2. There is a lot of public misunderstanding of what Darwin's work on evolution states. After writing this book, can you give a simple picture of this science?
Darwin saw that the world was more rationally describable by understanding that natural laws act on all material things uniformly. Through his studies in geology, he knew that the world was very old, though nowhere near the approximately 4.6 billion years we understand it to be today. Simply put, he perceived that living organisms should reproduce at a rate that would see every square inch of the Earth covered by life in short order. But limited resources-space, food, water, and mates-lead to competition. The natural variability we see in all sexually reproducing organisms plus competition between individuals means that some traits will be more beneficial in the struggle for survival with limited resources than others. Beneficial traits are those that help an individual either adapt to the environment or compete against other organisms. The individuals that are more successful will leave more offspring and their beneficial adaptations will spread through a population because of inheritance. As those traits accumulate over generations, a species changes enough that we may classify it as a new species. It may coexist with its parent species in a new habitat or it may drive the parent to extinction. Most of life that has existed in the history of the Earth has gone extinct. If we trace this change and diversification into new niches back through time, we can connect all life back to a previous ancestor, until we arrive at the one or several forms of life from which all organisms are descended. Paraphrasing Stephen Jay Gould, Darwin set himself to collecting the data from the natural world that demonstrated the fact of evolution-species change over time-and also constructed from those facts a theory of how the mechanism of natural selection-the differential survival rates of individuals that arise from more and less beneficial adaptations-drives the process of evolution.

3. Since it incorporates several elements like Darwin's personal life and a brief history of how our understanding of evolution has itself evolved, can you tell us how the story took shape?
The story was originally going to be a straight cover-to-cover adaptation of the Origin of Species. As it started coming together, though, it became clear that one of the original ideas behind the book, to introduce a new type of reader to Darwin, would not be achieved by starting and ending with his work. We thought that it would be beneficial to give the reader an introduction to the period in which he lived, his life and how he came to publish a book that turned humanity's very conception of reality on its head. He ushered in a revolution in thought, but he was also the product of his times, when a number of revolutions and a great many thinkers guided him along his path. It became clear that it would be important to show that he was not some isolated genius on a pedestal, but a man who worked very hard and very long on an idea that shook him and his society to the core. With that in mind, we added a first part to give context- a biopic. Then we crafted the second part, shifting the reader from an external view of the man and his times to taking temporary residence inside Darwin's brain. Here the reader sees how he formulated and created a logical framework for his arguments in defense of evolution and its mechanism of natural selection. The audience sees how he thought this through by focusing on the concrete observations of the natural world that he spent decades gathering and then putting into place as the pillars to support his treatise. Finally, as we drew near to the end of his work, it became apparent that we would be doing the audience a disservice by dropping the story there, for there have been almost innumerable small and giant strides forward in the biological sciences in the 150 years since Darwin wrote the Origin. Using the broadest brushstrokes, several questions needed to be answered: Was he right? Did the accruing evidence support his argument? What came next? What do we know now? What other types of evidence came into play that supported, nullified or altered his original work of 1859? We hoped that this format would be both informative and entertaining to the lay reader and to someone who already knew something about Darwin and the study of biology.

4. This is an unusual approach to explaining science. Why did you take this approach and what type of life are you looking for the book to have? How do you want the public to receive this story? Who is the audience?
One of the central ideas driving this project was to introduce Darwin's seminal work to a new type and generation of reader. We wanted to expose everyone from interested teenagers to a general adult audience and members of the scientific community who would be interested in seeing the writing in a new light. We are a generation of people who enjoy interfacing with information in a visual format. The graphic novel takes advantage of the best parts of storytelling and the visual media. Each panel is like a waypoint on the path to telling this story. With those waypoints, we can guide the reader into Darwin's mind, but the nature of the static images in the graphic novel also creates a mental playground for the reader to connect the dots creatively in his or her own head. Maybe it is that enigmatic aspect of connecting the dots that adds a rich texture to the graphic novel experience; it feels more palpable, grittier, more real. It brings the concepts to life and, like science, demands that the reader confront them, interact with them and challenge them. The most exciting life for this book would be for three things to happen: 1) for people to look at it as a work of collectable and tradable art. The story and the illustrations were labors of love by two people who care deeply for science, art and the natural world. We hope that those aspects that we poured into the book will be apparent to the audience; 2) It would be great to one day see worn out copies in the hands of fans of all ages and libraries. We hope that the book connects with readers enough that they want to share it with friends and relatives and that those people pick up a copy and do the same. We are trying to embody the beauty of nature in this book. We hope and believe that many people are inclined to want to read about that and view our artistic interpretation; and 3) We would love to see the work become part of library systems and academic reading lists to help launch the excitement of a new generation of scientists who study the natural world and leaders who care for it.

A Note on the Illustrations from Nicolle Rager Fuller:
Approaching the art for Darwin's Origin of Species, I wanted the style to be both accurate and fresh. It was the perfect opportunity to explore illustrations with more of an expressive, hand-drawn flare, unique from both the more detailed, realistic science illustration tradition, and the traditions of sequential art (graphic novel). The illustrations are rooted in my painstaking research on the details of various fossils, plants, animals and historical details, but ultimately, I had to make decisions from an artist's perspective about what was most important to the overall story. There is such a huge variety of art styles now in the graphic novel genre, I tried to look at a wide selection of both fiction and non-fiction sequential art, to study the various styles and how they were composed to focus the readers attention and impart different feelings and emotions. I wanted to visually tell both the science behind Darwin's book, but also to move beyond just the facts, and share some of the excitement and Darwin's own vision, influenced by the time and history he developed his ideas in. Perhaps surprisingly, science illustration is quite a broad field, and different artists have different approaches. As opposed to a purely diagrammatic approach, my goal has always been to create dynamic art that draws in the uninterested and those who think science is too inaccessible. If someone out there normally wouldn't pick up a science book, but takes a second-look at this graphic adaptation of Darwin's Origin of Species, we'll have accomplished a lot. And if someone who already enjoys learning about science appreciates the art, that's fantastic