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comicbookphysics.bsky.social
Comic Book Physics
@comicbookphysics.bsky.social
610 followers 520 following 340 posts
I post interesting/fun uses of physics and astronomy from the world of comics
#comics #physics #astronomy 🇨🇦
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comicbookphysics.bsky.social
A Physics emergency in Federal Bureau of Physics #6 (2014) #dccomics #vertigo
A man leans forward, speaking into a phone held up to his ear (a large cordless landline phone). A voice asks “and which emergency service do you require?” His answer: “PHYSICS.”
January 7, 2026 at 1:43 PM
comicbookphysics.bsky.social
The Atom uses electromagnetism to save himself — DC Comics Presents #51 (1982) #theatom #electromagnetism #dccomics
Three panels left to right showing The Atom attempting to interact with a horseshoe magnet. Time travel has left him in the form of a phantom so he is not able to hold onto the magnet and return to his own time. Instead he has to use electromagnetism to attract himself to the magnet. He explains: “Got an idea! All matter contains POSITIVE protons and NEGATIVE electrons whose charges cancel each other out. By rapidly shrinking, I can disrupt my body’s normal electrical neutrality … and briefly take on the aspect of a CHARGED PARTICLE myself! And “charge-in-motion” is the physicists’ definition of …magnetism!”
December 28, 2025 at 2:38 PM
comicbookphysics.bsky.social
Amadeus Cho calculates how to get out of a tight spot in Amazing Fantasy #15 (2005) #marvelcomics
Amadeus Cho stands in a diner, fists-clenched and facing two wide-eyed strangers with their hands up. The air around him is filled with physics equations as he calculates how to escape.
December 27, 2025 at 12:06 AM
comicbookphysics.bsky.social
“Consider a velocity so great that it would take you around the Earth’s equator seven and a half times in a single second” — DC Comics Presents #51 (1982) #superman #theatom #dccomics
Four page-wide panels: (1) Superman speeds after a laser beam propagating in space. He thinks “… unless I can outrace this LASER BEAM!” A caption says “Consider the speed of light ..” (2) Now we see inside the laser beam, the silhouette of The Atom riding alongside the photons in the beam. The caption reads “Consider a velocity so great that it would take you around the Earth’s equator 7 1/2 times in a single second…” (3) Zoomed out again to show Superman flying alongside the head of the beam. Caption: ”Now consider a man whose powers are so vast and his will so determined that he can match that speed… and BEAT IT!” (4) Superman is using his cape to catch The Atom who is emerging from the beam and growing back to his full size. Caption: “His name, of course … is SUPERMAN!”
December 17, 2025 at 5:04 PM
comicbookphysics.bsky.social
Our place in the Universe — The All New Atom #1 (2006) #theatom #dccomics
Dropping new Professor Ryan Choi off at his house, his colleague Panda pontificates on our place in the Universe: “Earth’s circumference at the equator’s almost twenty-five thousand miles, Ryan. It’s ten times that distance to our own Moon. Our average distance from the Sun is 93 million miles. Jupiter’s almost five times that distance, at a diameter 12 times that of Earth. Our Sun dwarfs our planet, and it’s one star out of an untold number. It’s not even a particularly LARGE star. Look up at the night sky, Ryan. We’re each and every one of us ALREADY small.”
December 16, 2025 at 5:28 PM
comicbookphysics.bsky.social
A head-on collision between irresistible force and immovable object fixes the space-time continuum in DC Comics Presents #2 (1978) #superman #superboy #dccomics
Three panels showing Superman and Superboy first lining up facing each other preparing to run, then sprinting at high speed towards each other, and then finally flashes of light and a loud BARAMMM as they collide. The thoughts of Superman reveal what is happening: “The signal transmitted across time by the alien COMMUNICATOR I’m wearing DID THIS — DISTURBED the SPACE-TIME CONTINUUM— DISTORTING the NATURAL LAWS — allowing me to CO-EXIST with a version of MYSELF from an earlier time of my life! But as a RESULT of the disruption, both SUPERBOY and I are TRAPPED here in the 30th CENTURY! I once DREAMED about a situation like this — when I was SUPERBOY! And IN that dream, we solved our problem with a DELIBERATE HEAD-ON COLLISION BETWEEN US! The impact of an IRRESISTIBLE FORCE meeting an IMMOVABLE OBJECT — namely the two of US — hurled us back to our respective times! I just hope it works in REAL LIFE, TOO!”
December 15, 2025 at 1:02 PM
comicbookphysics.bsky.social
Captain Comet speed reads — Strange Adventures #41 (1954) #captaincomet #dccomics
Captain Comet stands flipping through the pages of a book. A woman to his left asks “Why, CAPTAIN COMET, how can you read so fast?” He replies “My mind takes a split-second PHOTOGRAPH of each page, Linda! Now, have you a television set?”
December 9, 2025 at 1:01 PM
comicbookphysics.bsky.social
Reed hears the call of his microchips — Fantastic Four #334 (1989) #fantasticfour
Reed Richards is at the front of the scene, looking out towards us. Sharon Ventura as She-Thing is in the background and asks “Uh, Reed?” Reed replies “MMMM. I think I hear my microchips calling, Sharon. I’ll see you later!”
December 8, 2025 at 5:53 PM
comicbookphysics.bsky.social
Resonant vibrations solidify the air but that’s not enough to stop She-Hulk! — The Savage She-Hulk #25 (1981) #SheHulkSunday #marvelcomics
Radius boasts to She-Hulk “I can cause resonating vibrations — force the very air molecules themselves to solidify around you — trap you in an unbreakable shell —“ but ends with “—Unk—!” as She-Hulk cries out “Says you!” and punches him.
December 7, 2025 at 3:12 PM
comicbookphysics.bsky.social
Thanks to Einstein, Matter Eater Lad digests an energy beam — Superboy #184 (1972, collected in DC Finest: Legion of Super-Heroes: Zap goes the Legion) #LegionOfSuperHeroes #Einstein #MatterEaterLad
An orange-coloured beam is going into Matter-Eater Lad’s mouth as he says “You forget — all energy is nothing more than converted MATTER! I can DIGEST the stun-beam with no ill effects!”
December 4, 2025 at 1:21 PM
comicbookphysics.bsky.social
Leia and Luke look for Alderaan in the night sky — Star Wars #33 (2017) #starwars
Three wide panels. Top: Leia and Luke are lying on a grassy slope looking up at the night sky. Middle: a close up on the back of Luke’s head in the foreground, looking towards Leia who faces up to the sky. Luke asks, “You still LOOK for it, don’t you?” Leia replies “Every time I look up. And the weird part is …” Bottom: “…sometimes it’s still there. We’re so far away right now, the light from its explosion still hasn’t reached us. It’s hard not to feel like… if I just fly toward that spot… it’ll still be there.”
November 29, 2025 at 1:56 PM
comicbookphysics.bsky.social
Strange Adventures #39 (1953) #dccomics
A man buzzes with electricity in the foreground, frozen to the spot holding onto a piece of electrical equipment. He says “EEEYOW— the electric current! Turn it off! Let me go!” A sinister looking man in the background replies “I’ll turn it off, Clem— but I won’t let you go!”
November 26, 2025 at 1:19 PM
comicbookphysics.bsky.social
The Complete History of the Universe — Fermilab poster from 1984 (Angela Gonzalez, Michael Turner) #cosmology #sciart
A black and white poster showing the different stages of the history of the Universe. On the left is a cartoon of nested circles illustrating the Big Bang and then on the right are parallel scales showing time, energy, temperature, density. At the bottom another scale shows the constituent particles relevant for each time period. The lines are labelled with significant events such as “End of Grand Unification”, “End of Electroweak Unification”, “Matter Domination: Formation of Structure Begins” and “Formation of atoms”. This image comes from the article by Michael Turner “The Road to Precision Cosmology” published in 2022.
November 24, 2025 at 3:43 PM
comicbookphysics.bsky.social
I can’t wait to see what’s on the other side of the Moon! — Strange Adventures #39 (1953) #farsideofthemoon #dccomics
Two people in a small red space ship look down at the Moon. The space ship looks like a round version of a 1950s car with fins and a long round bench seat. Pointing towards the Moon, one of the figures says “The other side of the Moon… never seen from Earth! It looks exactly the same as the Earth side!”
November 24, 2025 at 12:58 PM
comicbookphysics.bsky.social
Awesome Andy says hello on #SheHulkSunday! — She-Hulk #2 (2004) #She-Hulk #AwesomeAndroid #marvelcomics
Awesome Andy waves hello to Jennifer Walters as she is being shown around her new office.
November 23, 2025 at 2:26 PM
comicbookphysics.bsky.social
A new villain takes inspiration from nuclear fusion experiments in The Fury of Firestorm #18 (1983) #firestorm #dccomics #nuclearfusion
A man in a green suit is being held in the air by white rings that send off a bright blast of energy. On the left, a man in a helmet explains “I call myself TOKAMAK, the human reactor! ‘Tokamak’ is the Russian name for a FUSION PLASMA REACTOR…” We now see Tokamak in full. He is wearing a metallic suit and the man in green is now a blur surrounded by white rings of plasma as he screams AAAAAAA.. Tokamak continues “PLASMA ENERGY RINGS, Merkyn, MAGNETIC FIELDS - of the kind used to control a FUSION REACTOR! I can generate them by focusing the energies I now contain.”
November 20, 2025 at 1:38 PM
comicbookphysics.bsky.social
Comedy is hard — Absolute Flash #8 (2025) #theflash #physicsjoke
Barry Allen, standing in front of his class, puts his hand to his head. “What? No points for bad physics jokes? Okay, tough crowd.”
November 19, 2025 at 12:55 PM
comicbookphysics.bsky.social
Watching the cosmic microwave background radiation on TV — Traveling to Mars #11 (2024, Mark Russell and Roberto Meli)
A couple on a sofa fell asleep watching TV and have just woken up to the glow of the screen. “Look it’s snowing.” “I didn’t even know televisions still did that.” In the panel below we see the TV screen filled with random noise. The captions read “I remember how as a kid, I’d get up early to watch cartoons and be disappointed that I was too early. That there wasn’t anything on. Not understanding that what I was actually seeing was the microwave radiation left over from the birth of the universe.”
November 18, 2025 at 3:18 AM
comicbookphysics.bsky.social
The heading of the letters page in The Fury of Firestorm #9 (1983) #firestorm #dccomics
Firestorm flies towards us, arms outstretched, above the words “Nuclear Reactions”, the title of the letters page.
November 17, 2025 at 1:01 PM
comicbookphysics.bsky.social
Scientific people know very well that time is only a kind of space — Classics Illustrated #133 The Time Machine (1966)
The opening page of Classics Illustrated adaptation of “The Time Machine” from 1966. It shows the Time Traveller working on the time machine in his laboratory, wearing shirt and tie and holding a soldering iron. The time machine consists of a frame built from two circular tubes at right angles to each other, within which is a seat with various bits of wiring and controls. At the bottom of the page is a caption that reads “Scientific people know very well that time is only a kind of space. We can move forward and backward in time just as we can move forward and backward in space. To prove this theory, I invented a machine to travel through time. If you pressed one lever, the machine went back into the past. If you pressed the other lever, the machine glided forward into the future. With this machine, I set out to explore time.”
November 14, 2025 at 12:54 PM
comicbookphysics.bsky.social
The mists of hyperspace — Mystery in Space #63 (1960) #dccomics
Two men in the cockpit of a space ship. Everything is cast in a green glow and swirls of green mist can be seen through the window. The caption reads “Captain Parker presses a special control button and a green light floods the starship as the mists of hyper-space close in about the CONQUISTADOR…” One of the men exclaims “So this is what it’s like to travel in a space-warp!”
November 13, 2025 at 1:30 PM
comicbookphysics.bsky.social
A rogue planet accidentally intercepts the zeta-beam in Mystery in Space #55 (1959) #dccomics #exoplanets
In the caption Alanna is describing to Adam Strange the reason why the zeta-beam hadn’t reached him: “My father disproved that belief when he calculated that the ZETA-BEAM had struck a runaway world whose erratic course through space caused it to intercept the ZETA-BEAM on its way to Earth and you…” Below, we see Alanna looking astonished as her father shows her an image of the zeta-beam striking the rogue planet.
November 12, 2025 at 1:17 PM
comicbookphysics.bsky.social
Star Wars #17 (2016) #starwars #marvelcomics
A hooded figure says “You’ve never heard of the MILLENIUM FALCON? It’s the ship that made the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs.” The Twi’lek next to him replies “What’s a Kessel Run?” Reply: “It’s fast enough for you, pal.”
November 12, 2025 at 1:28 AM
comicbookphysics.bsky.social
They were listening! — Flash Gordon #1 (1988) #flashgordon #dccomics #seti
Dr Zarkov in a panel from DC Comics Flash Gordon #1 (1988). He pounds his fist on a desk, saying “For years we have DREAMED of the stars, yearning to find life forms approximating ourselves! I’ve STRIVED toward that end myself — broadcasting radio signals out into space in the hope I would be answered.” A zoom in on his face, wide-eyed and open-mouthed. “Several years ago, that answer finally came — when my radio beacon attracted a PROBE sent from another PLANET!”
November 11, 2025 at 12:59 PM
comicbookphysics.bsky.social
An ammonia lake in the outer Solar System in Action Comics #382 (1969) — very cool considering that we now know there are methane lakes on Saturn’s moon Titan! #LegionOfSuperHeroes #TitanMoon
Light Lass appears on a large screen in front of a computer console. She has just entered an airlock. Our villain, dressed in a brown suit, says “Good evening, my dear… it’s a bit chilly out tonight.. minus 240 degrees…the AMMONIA LAKE is freezing over! Won’t you come in?”
November 9, 2025 at 7:18 PM