Here then is the beta version of my strip about evolution. This is a chapter of the book Science Stories which will be out from Myriad Editions next spring. I’m sure there’ll be mistakes here, so do feel free to point them out, so that I can make the necessary changes. Thank you.
swans on tea
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Great job! Definitely leave out any poking-fun-at-religion, I liked this, but you might turn off potentially-open-minded religious types, and decrease the utility of your message. Or make 2 versions, one which pokes fun and one of which doesn’t. You can still critique the arguments of the ID crowd, of course. Might also want to mention the crock-a-duck in the tree of life. e.g. could have a panel with a “of course there’s no crock-a-duck” showing a tree branching into reptiles and birds, an arrow to the common ancestor way back on the trunk, and an empty-dotted-circle between modern day crocadiles and ducks showing that the non-existence of a crock-a-duck actually supports evolution, as evolution predicts no living species that is half crocadile and half duck, just an empty space between two distant branches on the tree of life. Also explain that a new “species” is a distinction that cane be made after enough time has passed, it’s not a sharp sudden distinction. I agree keep sexual selection for its own strip. But you might want to include more in this strip on extinction, e.g. if variations in offspring and random mutations in living members of a species aren’t adequate to fit a rapid change in environment, a species doesn’t evolve, it just goes extinct, and this actually happens a lot, especially with rapid changes (e.g. asteroids, human contributed to climate and environment change).