I was quite disappointed with Etienne Garcin's graphic novel, Philosophix, in which he attempts to explain ten famous stories from the history of philosophy in comic form. The premise reminded me immediately of Sophie's World but Garcin delves deeper into the depths of these ideas, not shying away from complexity. Certainly there is a love of ideas that comes across in these narrations and he cleverly inserts himself as a character (and explainer) which gives the book a personal touch. The illustrations are fine, bright and varied but one of the major problems I had with the concept was that I couldn't see what advantage the images brought to the project. There offer very little aid in explaining things and the text is lengthy and difficult to understand (for a philosophy layman) so I found myself longing for a plain text rather than scattered speach bubbles which often meant I lost the flow somewhat. Some of the stories are interesting and I liked the insights into the lives, times and personalities of these famous names but I didn't finish the book with a better understanding of the ideas themselves nor of their relevance. I freely admit that is in part due to my own density but when a book sets out to present new ideas to you, I feel it should leave a clearer impression of those ideas by the end.