Everyone asks why I chose comics. And I mean Everyone.
The honest answer: because I kept forgetting the technical stuff I read in books, and I never forgot a story.
The history of cybersecurity is genuinely gripping. The Morris Worm happened because a graduate student got a piece of logic slightly wrong and accidentally took down 10% of the internet. Kevin Mitnick — the most wanted hacker of the 1990s — was finally caught not because of digital forensics, but because of radio waves. The same telephone network he'd spent a decade evading used physics to betray him.
These are not dry case studies. They are stories with protagonists, antagonists, irony, and consequences.
But most cybersecurity education presents them as bullet points in a slide deck.
Comics force a different discipline. You cannot write six paragraphs of passive voice when you have a panel to fill. You have to decide: what is the one image that makes this moment land?
That constraint is useful. It forces clarity.
The caption-heavy, documentary style I use for Cybercom is deliberately serious — not cartoon-y. Think Persepolis or Logicomix, not superhero panels. The visual layer is there to anchor the narrative, not to decorate it.
There is also something important about dual accessibility.
A curious 13-year-old and a seasoned security professional are reading the same panels. The story works for both. The technical depth lives in the "Under the Hood" sections — but the core narrative does not require them.
That is the goal. Comics as the wide door that everyone can walk through, with deeper rooms available for those who want them.
More chapters soon.