The Cartoon History of the Universe: Difference between revisions

* [[Did Not Do the Research]]: One or two minor errors that stand out only in contrast to the enormous amount of research the author obviously ''did'' do. For instance, Gonick states that when Henry VIII broke with the Roman Catholic Church, Thomas More, the Archbishop of Canterbury, protested and was assassinated. Apparently he has confused Thomas More with Thomas Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury who was assassinated four centuries earlier when Henry II ranted, "Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?!" Thomas More was never Archbishop of Canterbury. He was Henry VIII's chancellor; when he balked at the break with Rome, he was stripped of his office and eventually tried and executed for treason, as recounted in Robert Bolt's play, ''A Man for All Seasons.'' However, Gonick will edit out errors from subsequent versions when they are pointed out to him.

* [[Doing inIn the Wizard]]: The series gives secular accounts of semi-historical events described in such sources as ''[[The Bible]]'' and ''[[The Iliad]]''. For example, rather than say that Aaron parted the Red Sea, it says the Jews ditched the pursuing Egyptians in muddy terrain. This is due to some scholars believing that the parting of the Red Sea is a mistranslation. Other times, however, the comic directly recreates scenes from religious texts such as the Bhagavad Gita, keeping the deities intact.

** Babur, founder of the Mughal Empire in India, is portrayed as a stoner with buck teeth: a stoner, because he is said to have liked a kind of cannabis candy, and buckteeth because his name is hypothesized to mean "beaver."

** The "''Northern Barbarians''."

** Men often have ludicrously bulbous noses; Moses' nose is thinner but just as ridiculous because of the way it ''hooks''. No, this isn't like the stereotypical Semitic hooked nose, but like a pencil that abruptly takes a 90º turn. Women are more likely to have relatively realistic noses.