Real-life scientists inspire these comic book superheroes
Jaye Gardiner loves comic books, and she loves science. So sensing an opportunity, she decided to combine the two. In 2015, Gardiner and two other friends, Khoa Tran and Kelly Montgomery, founded an online publishing company called JKX Comics. At the time, the three were pursuing Ph.D.s in different fields at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. And they knew how tough it can be to explain research or engage students in the nuances of science. So they decided to use the easy-to-digest cartoon format and light humor to boost scientific literacy. The trio spent weekends at a campus bar writing the script and drawing panels for their first comic book, published in 2016. The comic, EBV and the Replication Dance, describes how the common Epstein-Barr virus replicates by telling a story about the virus going clubbing with friends inside a human cell. “You have the visual components” to help convey complex systems, “and then you also have that story element,” says Tran, now an epigeneticist at the...