Virtual Curation Lab's Comic Publications

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  A Heart Pierced by a Narwhal Tusk and Other Sketches

  Maggie Colangelo and Bernard Means

  A series of sketches and spot illustrations by artist Maggie Colangelo, Senior Graphics Artist for VCU's Virtual Curation Laboratory. Many of the illustrations are related to various celebrations over the calendar year, usually tied to open houses in the lab.

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  Founding Monsters

  Maggie Colangelo and Bernard Means

  The Founding Monsters comic book was created as a science-friendly graphical storytelling framework that tells the story of the Founding Fathers and their obsession with prehistoric megafauna, especially mastodons and giant ground sloths. Founding Monsters combines sequential art (e.g. comic book style) with historical and scientific data. The first mastodon (Mammut americanum) fossils were found in New York in the early 18th century. Later in the 18th century, Thomas Jefferson was sent fossils from what is now West Virginia for what were eventually identified as bones from a giant ground sloth (Megalonyx jeffersoni). The founding fathers, including not only Jefferson, but also Benjamin Franklin and George Washington, saw these and other isolated bones discovered in Kentucky, New York, and Virginia as critical to countering a notion that simply being in the Americas physically affected its inhabitants—animals, plants, and people—causing them to degenerate relative to their Old World counterparts. Jefferson, Franklin, and Washington all owned the fossils of Ice Age megafauna. Some of Jefferson’s mastodon and giant ground sloth fossils were collected by William Clark from Big Bone Lick at Jefferson’s request and these are preserved at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia. While the fate of Washington’s mastodon fossils is unclear, a mastodon molar belonging to Franklin was found in property he owned in Philadelphia. However, even as more mastodon and giant ground sloth fossils were uncovered, they were not seen as a compelling counterpoint to the notion of American degeneracy—a complete or at least nearly complete skeleton was needed. In 1799, bones from a mastodon skeleton were discovered on a farm in Orange County, New York that elicited great interest from Jefferson and his compatriots, including Charles Willson Peale, a famous painter and owner of the first public museum in the U.S. In 1801, Peale traveled to New York to purchase the mastodon bones found two years earlier and the right to excavate more bones. As part of America’s first scientific excavation, he developed an ingenious pumping system consisting of a human-powered wooden wheel to remove water from his excavation areas, famously portrayed in his 1806 to 1808 painting Exhumation of the Mastodon. Peale recovered enough bones to reconstruct two mastodons, one of which was one of the first reconstructed fossil animals and displayed it in his museum in Philadelphia beginning on Christmas Eve in 1801.

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  Founding Monsters (Audio Version)

  Maggie Colangelo and Bernard Means

  The Founding Monsters comic book was created as a science-friendly graphical storytelling framework that tells the story of the Founding Fathers and their obsession with prehistoric megafauna, especially mastodons and giant ground sloths. Founding Monsters combines sequential art (e.g. comic book style) with historical and scientific data. The first mastodon (Mammut americanum) fossils were found in New York in the early 18th century. Later in the 18th century, Thomas Jefferson was sent fossils from what is now West Virginia for what were eventually identified as bones from a giant ground sloth (Megalonyx jeffersoni). The founding fathers, including not only Jefferson, but also Benjamin Franklin and George Washington, saw these and other isolated bones discovered in Kentucky, New York, and Virginia as critical to countering a notion that simply being in the Americas physically affected its inhabitants—animals, plants, and people—causing them to degenerate relative to their Old World counterparts. Jefferson, Franklin, and Washington all owned the fossils of Ice Age megafauna. Some of Jefferson’s mastodon and giant ground sloth fossils were collected by William Clark from Big Bone Lick at Jefferson’s request and these are preserved at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia. While the fate of Washington’s mastodon fossils is unclear, a mastodon molar belonging to Franklin was found in property he owned in Philadelphia. However, even as more mastodon and giant ground sloth fossils were uncovered, they were not seen as a compelling counterpoint to the notion of American degeneracy—a complete or at least nearly complete skeleton was needed. In 1799, bones from a mastodon skeleton were discovered on a farm in Orange County, New York that elicited great interest from Jefferson and his compatriots, including Charles Willson Peale, a famous painter and owner of the first public museum in the U.S. In 1801, Peale traveled to New York to purchase the mastodon bones found two years earlier and the right to excavate more bones. As part of America’s first scientific excavation, he developed an ingenious pumping system consisting of a human-powered wooden wheel to remove water from his excavation areas, famously portrayed in his 1806 to 1808 painting Exhumation of the Mastodon. Peale recovered enough bones to reconstruct two mastodons, one of which was one of the first reconstructed fossil animals and displayed it in his museum in Philadelphia beginning on Christmas Eve in 1801.

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  Founding Monsters Tales

  Maggie Colangelo and Bernard Means

  The creative team behind the Founding Monsters comic book—Maggie Colangelo and Dr. Bernard K. Means—bring you Founding Monsters Tales. Founding Monsters Tales features all-new art by Maggie and explores and expands on themes in Founding Monsters. Meet again Moses Williams, an enslaved servant of the Peale family who not only helped reconstruct the first mastodon skeleton, but was an unheralded artist in his own right. Find out whether mastodons were meat eaters, and how they differed from mammoths. Learn whether Thomas Jefferson was correct in his interpretation of what he called “the great claw.” Discover what Jefferson thought Lewis and Clark would reveal during their explorations of the American west. Uncover why James Madison made measurements of weasels, some quite intimate in nature.

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  Tales from the Virtual Curation Lab, Issue 01

  Maggie Colangelo and Bernard Means

  "Tales from the Virtual Curation Lab brings you fascinating graphic narratives inspired by artifacts, fossils, historic objects—and even one person—3D scanned by VCU’s Virtual Curation Laboratory. Read about an Ice Age camel that had its face ripped of by a bear, the world’s oldest ham, a vampire’s skull, and more!”--back cover

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  The Mouse in the Museum

  Maggie Colangelo and Bernard Means

  Find out about America's first successful public museum of art and natural history from a unique perspective: a mouse! The museum mouse guides you through Charles Willson Peale's Philadelphia Museum from its founding in his own home to its eventual establishment in what is now called Independence Hall. You will encounter a killer bear, an eagle that has seen better days, and the massive bones of an extinct elephant: the mastodon. This gripping tale is brought to you by Maggie Colangelo and Bernard K. Means, co-creators of Founding Monsters, Founding Monsters Tales, Mystery of the Missing Megafauna, and Tales from the Virtual Curation Lab Number 1.

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  The Mystery of the Missing Megafauna

  Maggie Colangelo and Bernard Means

  The creative team behind Founding Monsters and Founding Monsters Tales have created a new comic that takes a more scientific and less historic approach to the giant mammals that once roamed North America. The Mystery of the Missing Megafauna explores how changing climate impacted biodiversity and megafauna populations in North America at the end of the last Ice Age. Particular attention is placed on the extinction of mastodons, mammoths, giant ground sloths and other megafauna whose fossils are found at Saltville in southwestern Virginia. This comic draws a connection to contemporary climate change and the major extinctions happening today. The narrative is suitable for children and intended as an educational resource.