PixlBit

I've seen several of these "Comic Book Story of" books lately. I've read one on the history of pinball and now this one on video games. It's surprisingly good and enormously fun to read and see. 

So there are two aspects to this (and really any) comic book: writing and illustration. Jonathan Hennessey wrote a very insightful treatment full of interesting people and deep digs into the origins of the technology. People like Nolan Bushnell, Jerry Lawson and Miyamoto are given their own full page profile. On the tech side, I was thrilled to learn about early computers I had never heard of before like the 1940s Nimatron that could play math game Nim against a human opponent. There was also interesting hacks like the MIT Green building that was turned into a giant Tetris game with wireless LED panels in the windows. This book is a fun and intelligent read, which, for me, hits the sweet spot. 

Illustration is done byJack McGowan who provided one of my favorite parts of this book, trivia. Every page has numerous references to video games across all time. Duke Nukem is seen hanging out at a facility housing a PDP1 room sized computer. Sonic is on a WWII aircraft carrier telling the story of the founding of Sega. I thought the graphic really interesting and photographed it. 

 

You could easily play a game of guessing all the visual references to games in this book. It was a delight to try and identify each and every one as I read (Imagine Sonic in Top Gun! I'll see that over the Tom Cruise version).

Jonathan Hennessey works in TV and Film and has published several comic book history treatments. Jack McGowan is a young designer. This is his first book project. I really enjoyed his encylopedic visual references throughout the book. Great job!