Jens Harder

In the beginning was the dot. It grows bigger on each page, like in a flicker book, until it becomes a circle, the explosion of which leaves straight lines behind. Comic artist Jens Harder presents the Big Bang as the birth of form. What follows in his fourth Alpha . . . Directions, covering nearly 350 pages and using more than 2000 drawings, is no less than 14 billion years of world history until the appearance of human beings. (…) It is in fact difficult to categorise Alpha . . . Directions, as the comic functions both just like an illustrated non-fiction book and a work of art. The first amazing thing is the sheer wealth of knowledge which Harder, a trained graphic artist, brings together in his book, while never resorting to incomprehen-
sible specialist jargon. Each chapter describes an age in the history of the world and its subsystems and at the end of each chapter a chronological table lists the most important events. Reading about scientific interconnections has never been as enjoyable since Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time, from the development of molecules and DNA to the continental drift to the demise of the dinosaurs and appearance of the apes. (…) At any rate, Alpha . .. Directions is a comic of a kind that has not been seen for a long time: complex, bulky, sensuous, provocative and grandiose.

Thomas von Steinaecker: „Die Schönheit eines Eukaryonten“
© Süddeutsche Zeitung, 8 August 2010