Action Philosophers! is a comic book series by artist Ryan Dunlavey and writer Fred Van Lente, it follows the cartoon adventures of caricatures of history's most famous philosophers. Possessing broad humor and making the often complex and metaphorical ideas of philosophy more easily understood than a traditional text would, the comic won the Xeric Grant award in late 2004. The comic concluded with its ninth issue in September 2007.
Philosophers featured in this comic, in order of appearance:
- Plato
- Friedrich Nietzsche
- Bodhidharma
- Thomas Jefferson
- St. Augustine of Hippo
- Ayn Rand
- Sigmund Freud
- Carl Jung
- Joseph Campbell
- Niccolò Machiavelli
- Karl Marx
- The Kabbalah
- Rene Descartes
- Jean-Paul Sartre
- Jacques Derrida
- Søren Kirkegaard
- St. Thomas Aquinas
- Ludwig Wittgenstein
- The Pre-Socratics
- Aristotle
- Epictetus
- Immanuel Kant
- Arthur Schopenhauer
- Georg Hegel
- John Stuart Mill
- Diogenes the Cynic
- Lao Tzu
- Michel Foucault
- David Hume
- Confucious
- George Berkeley
- Francis Bacon
- Jean-Jacques Rousseau
- Thomas Hobbes
- Mary Wallstonecraft
- Benedict Spinoza
- Gottfried Leibniz
- Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī
Action Philosophers! provides examples of:
- Adaptation Distillation: People can spend years interpreting philosophical texts, but these comics make them intelligible to the average person. Most people who take the time to read the original texts would know, however, that they're vastly simplified.
- All Monks Know Kung-Fu: Bodhidharma is apparently the person who started it all.
- Artistic License – Religion: The comic portrays Mithras as a solar and Fertility God with parallels to Jesus such as having a birthday on December 25th. However, most of what has been discovered about the Mithras Mystery Cults doesn't support such a claim. For example, Mithras probably wasn't a solar deity since Mithraism already had a sun god in the form of Sol Invictus. In addition, the Mithraists celebrated Sol Invictus's birthday on December 25th not Mithras'.
- Book Ends: Used in some of the Philosophers' comics, notably Marx and Machiavelli.
- Corrupt Church: This is Søren Kierkegaard's view on the Church of Denmark, which informs his views and philosophy.
- Fat Bastard: This trope is used several times as visual aid such as depicting the corruption of the Church of Denmark. This is notably Averted with Thomas Aquinas, who is depicted as fat but not particularly evil or jerkish.
- Game Show Host: William James, in his segment, hosts a game show called The Pragmatism Show, where George Berkley, John Stuart Mill and August Comte judge the philosophies presented by the contestants.
- Hobbes Was Right: Well, he's featured, but it's neutral.
- Hulk Speak: Plato. Referring to the fact that he'd been a wrestler in his younger daysnote , the illustrations show him with a Lucha Libre type mask, yelling "PLATO SMASH!"
- Hypocrite: Thomas Jefferson claimed to oppose slavery while being a slave owner himself.
- King Kong Copy: Confucius of all people is depicted this way, based on his Chinese name Kongzi, translated as Master Kong.
- Little Jimmy: One issue features Karl Marx giving an explanation of communism, as he originally interpreted it, to a Little Jimmy character.
- Machiavelli Was Wrong: Apparently, he was right. Too bad no one listened.
- Masked Luchador: Plato is depicted as this because he was a wrestler at one point in his life.
- The Man Is Sticking It to the Man: Major critique of Karl Marx's towards "capitalist" acceptance of minority rights, LGBTQ+, and feminism was not of benevolence, but for the sake of perpetuating its flawed system by appeasing the reformers.
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Misaimed Fandom: The comic points out how Adolf Hitler and Leopold and Loeb miss the point of Friedrich Nietzsche's philosophy. In fact, the comic depicts Nietzsche coming back to life to beat them up. - Re-Cut: One of the trade paperbacks, The MORE Than COMPLETE Action Philosophers!, rearranges the order of the segments so they occur in chronological order to when the philosophers lived. So where as the original comic starts with Nietzsche, the The MORE Than COMPLETE Action Philosophers! starts with the Pre-Socratic Philosophers.
- The Revolution Will Not Be Civilized: A major motto of Karl Marx, who believed that overthrowing Capitalist system required the support of the masses with the comic showing a group of child laborers toppling a consumerist city. Furthermore, Karl Marx himself participated in the revolt to an extent (shooting up a corporate office and a teacher who is teaching Marxist interpretation of movies much to Marx's chagrin) and desensitized towards a firing squad who also killed his would-be-sidekick's mother.
- Sinister Minister: In the story about Saint Augustine , Bishop Faustus of the Manichean faith is portrayed as a Jerkass who admits his religion doesn't make sense but tells Augustine to keep quiet since the other followers are too stupid to realize the holes in religion. Augustine was so demoralized by his encounter with Faustus that he nearly gave up on religion all together.
- Straw Nihilist: The first issue points out that Nietzsche probably would not approve (putting it mildly) of some of the people who claim to emulate him.
- Pragmatic Adaptation: As mentioned above, it simplifies the ideas of the world's greatest thinkers into a comic book.
- Shown Their Work: A few comics really prove that the authors have done so, giving bonuses and Easter Eggs to people who have actually read the works of these Philosophers. For example, in the Decartes issue, when Descartes explains the three kinds of thoughts, the artists drew a Chimera, which was an actual example Descartes used in the original text. The best part? This isn't mentioned at all.
- The Philosopher: The comic subverts this trope by making the characters ACTION PHILOSOPHERS.
- Took a Level in Badass: Some of the comics manage to upgrade the Philosophers into total Badasses. Notably Karl Marx, who wages war on the elite in favor of the masses as a One-Man Army.
- Truth in Television: Everything in the comics is true, except for what is obviously fictional. Actual quotes of these Philosophers are even highlighted and noted, and many of them are hilarious.
- Rousseau Was Right: The comic points out that he was actually probably wrong.
- Übermensch: Part of an ongoing joke with Nietzsche.
- Viewers Are Morons: Lampshaded by the Authors as the reason for the creation of these comics. A Truth in Television example is mentioned in the recommended books of the Freud-Jung-Campbell issue where it turns out that Jung wrote a book for his students, simplifying his ideas, because he wanted them to actually understand what he was teaching.
- Visual Pun: Campbell is seen in one panel stirring the world's religions and mythologies into a cooking pot. It's Campbell's Soup!
