Let’s face it: low-brow sells. Whether it’s trashy reality TV, explosion-laden movies, or cheap, cliched novels, there’s an ever-growing market for entertainment that requires little to no intellectual engagement. It’s all the more impressive, then, when an artist comes along who demands more from his audience.
Meet Aaron Diaz and his comic, Dresden Codak. Focusing mainly on Kimiko Ross, a 22-year old scientist and robotics expert who gets herself into situations of varying danger in the name of science, Dresden sets the bar a little higher right from the start by having an introverted intellectual as its main character. There are two main storylines that follow Kim, as well as several one-shot comics, plus others that have an assortment of characters and topics. A unifying thread for all of the comics is a high level of braininess, and the comics have almost constant references to various scientific and philosophical ideas and terms. An understanding of these ideas is needed to fully appreciate the comics, so don’t feel ashamed about doing some looking on Wikipedia (I had to look up quite a bit).
With all these weighty ideas being tossed around, what keeps Dresden Codak from feeling forced or pretentious is that one gets the sense that Diaz, like his characters, is genuinely passionate about the topics he covers, and he has no desire to “dumb things down” for the sake of wider appeal. That said, if the very thought of science repels you, you simply won’t like Dresden Codak. But even if that’s the case, it’s still worth checking out if only for the pretty pictures. If this is something that interests you, I think you’ll absolutely love it.
One of the things that really makes Dresden stand out to me is the way in which Diaz fully takes advantage of the webcomic medium. More often with the stand-alone comics, Diaz will choose to put the entire comic on one page, making it as long as it needs to be, which is something that can really only be done on the unlimited canvas of a website. While it makes collecting these into a book difficult (or impossible), it really shows off Diaz’s ability to lay out a page, something he does beautifully, forgoing tradition panel borders in favor of a more organic layout.
Another great aspect of Dresden is Diaz’s ability to vary his art style depending on the comic, and the wide array of styles he showcases on the site is very impressive. His art has also improved in leaps and bounds since he first started the site, so I would recommend starting with some of the more recent comics before going back to older ones. His most recent comics are absolutely gorgeous, and though it takes him a while to update, one can certainly understand why, and the wait for art of this quality is absolutely worth it.
A quick note on reading order: I would recommend starting with a few of the shorter comics, like “Lantern Season” (my favorite), “The Sleepwalkers,” and “Traversing the Luminiferous Aether” to get a sense of Diaz’s art and humor. If you like those, then go on to the main storylines (“Dark Science” is superb) and then revisit the rest of the short comics after those. As always, let me know what you think of it if you decide to check it out. Also, I’ll be meeting Diaz at SPX on Saturday, and I’ll put up pics of any cool merch I snag.
Happy reading,
-Nate
Tired of Superheroes 