All Roads Lead to Open Borders: A Caplan/Weinersmith Collaboration By Bryan Caplan

I am overjoyed to announce that I will be collaborating with famed artist Zach Weinersmith, best known for Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal. Our project, tentatively titled All Roads Lead to Open Borders, is a non-fiction graphic novel on the philosophy and social science of immigration. I’m writing the script and doing panel previsualization. Weinersmith will enhance and illustrate the entire book of roughly 160 color pages.

Why a graphic novel? I’m tempted to say, “Because I love graphic novels,” but my rationale is deeper. I love graphic novels for a reason: The combination of words and pictures is usually more enlightening, engaging, and memorable than words alone. Few historians match the power of Larry Gonick’s Cartoon History of the Universe series. The case for open borders, replete with thought experiments and huge effect sizes, will gain much resonance in a graphic format. Or so Zach and I aim to prove with our work.

Who’s our market? Since I oppose preaching to the choir, I’m aiming the book at any human being interested in (a) the ethics and science of immigration, or (b) non-fiction graphic novels. If I can persuade faculty who teach labor economics, economic development, sociology of migration, and philosophy of global justice to adopt All Roads Lead to Open Borders as a secondary textbook, I’ll be thrilled. And if Zach and I end up on a panel at Comic-Con, my delight will be complete.

So far, I’ve prepared two draft chapters. They’re not ready to share, but these three sample Weinersmith pages are. Only the first is inked, but even Zach’s roughs reveal his humbling talent.

P.S. After five years’ toil, I have finally sent a polished draft of The Case Against Education to my publisher, Princeton University Press. The wait for All Roads Lead to Open Borders should be much shorter. I foresee publication by late 2018.