Spectra #4

Another issue of the Spectra series that I picked up at the National Conference on Science Education. Artist Kerry G. Johnson found this review blog and was kind enough to send me issue #6 of the series as well as the trade paperback for #1-4, so expect some more Spectra reviews soon.

Title: Spectra
Issue: 4
Publisher: American Physical Society
Date: 2012
Writer: Rebecca Thompson
Artist: Kerry G. Johnson


When you have a teenaged superheroine living a double-life as a middle school student, the mean-girl story seems inevitable. Returning to school after summer vacation, Lucy Hene quickly becomes the target of mean-girl and social manipulator Tiffany Maxwell.

It doesn't help matters that Tiffany is an even match for Lucy on the swim team, or that Lucy's friends are taken in by Tiffany's charm.

But Tiffany has more up her sleeves than gossip and jealousy. She has a demon. Maxwell's Demon, to be precise. This is the monster that physicist James Clerk Maxwell described in his famous thought experiment on thermodynamics, and Tiffany's version is small, green, highly elusive, and several notches meaner than Tiffany herself.

Text introduction gives the basics on Maxwell's Demon. The story is mostly teen drama leading up to the impish imperilment at the climax. Lucy's friends continue to be pretty fickle with their loyalty, but it is all resolved nicely in the end.

Tiffany is the most effective villain so far in this series, and this issue had a more serious level of danger to the characters.

Rating: 6.5/10