Science as we know it is a system of acquiring knowledge based on the scientific method and an organized body of knowledge gained through such research. Then there is science!—note the exclamation mark—which generally involves the crazy misadventures of mad scientists and inventors as they battle those destructive forces which uncontrolled experimentation has wrought and explore the lost corners of the natural world encountering beings and places beyond imagination. Works that might be adorned with this label include Matt Fraction’s The Five Fists of Science and Phil Foglio’s Girl Genius series.
Perhaps feeling that there was a void to be filled (or not), Sydney Padua has created a series of comics about Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage that could perhaps be described as—math!
The comic strips are largely fiction; in the comic Lovelace and Babbage use the power of the difference engine to solve problems and fight evil , but in reality Lovelace died young and Babbage never built his calculating machines. However, each crazy misadventure is informed by actual facts and research, and there is the occasional strip based in reality, like Ada Lovelace—The Origin and this guest column for BBC TechLab, with snippets of dialog and other information taken from their original writings.
Sydney Padua is an animator, which shows in the expressiveness of his work. The Lovelace and Babbage stuff is being kept on a separate site from her main portfolio, which is probably a wise choice, as there is quite a bit of it. In addition to the main comics, the site is stuffed in every nook and cranny with sketches, designs, single-panel cartoons, and lots and lots of historical information.
