SOURCE: A review of The Cartoon History of the Universe: Volumes 1-7, From the Big Bang to Alexander the Great, in Publishers Weekly, Vol. 237, No. 30, July 27, 1990, p. 227.

[Below, the critic comments on the subjects covered in Larry Gonick's The Cartoon History of the Universe, praising the volume's humor and attempts at revisionism.]

Gonick's hilariously informative history of the planet [The Cartoon History of the Universe] is a great addition to the growing field of comics trade books. Starting with the Big Bang theory and moving on to the "evolution of everything," he manages to cover three billion years—from the origins of cellular life to the fossil and dinosaur periods that followed, right up to the first appearance of hominids—all with casual erudition, silly humor and delightfully cartoony black-and-white drawings. But Gonick doesn't stop there. He reinstates the record of women (their theoretical role in the development...