Mary Jane gave me this book for Christmas, not realizing it was a graphic book in comic format. She thought I wouldn’t like it, but she was wrong. Both the writing and the illustrations are quite good, and I learned a lot of things about beer that I didn’t know–like 95% of all beer sold in the world is pilsner, a type of lager. One thing that really worked in this book was the focus on how technology and chemistry kept bringing the beer industry back from disaster. The book is lively, funny in parts, and reminded me of the type of comics I liked as a kid–Classics Illustrated, the series that featured adaptations of literary classics such as Moby Dick, Hamlet, and The Iliad. Here is a screen grab of a page of The Comic Book Story of Beer.
