The Cartoon History of the Universe/YMMV
- Genius Bonus: Often. Some jokes are pretty funny on their own... unless you know the full depths of what's being referenced; then they get hilarious! For instance, volumes concerning Athenian democracy and the Roman republic are chock full of hints that will go over your head if you're not up to speed on American politics. Any section covering religion/philosophy will have short but sweet summaries of core beliefs and/or points of interest, often using modern idiom (Confucius' focus on protocol, ancient Greece?s frequent festivals, Jesus' sayings are paraphrased to emphasize the variety of topics he covered and the variety of ways he did it, and Krishna revealing the mind-blowing nature of what is actually real to Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita is truncated to "THIS is real!" and a full-page picture). You could just as easily be learning these points by reading them, though.
- Magnum Opus: Gonick did his very first volume in comic book form (Volume 1) in 1977. That was published in the first collection in 1990. The final volume was published in 2009. That's 32 years working on this, folks.