Moths at a porch light that never goes off3 panels. Effect: a bird that eats insects finds very few in the dark garden. Path: the insects were drawn away, to something bright. Cause: a porch light left on all night, with a cloud of moths around it.
A sprayed field, three meals later4 panels. Effect: a hawk carries more pesticide in its body than anyone else in the strip. Path: it ate many mice, and each mouse had stored a little in its fat. Path: each mouse had eaten many seeds with a trace of it on them. Cause: a field of plants, sprayed.
A barnacle crosses an ocean on a bottle3 panels. Effect: on a far shore a newcomer settles in and starts to crowd the locals. Path: it rode across the ocean holding on to a floating bottle. Cause: the bottle, which should never have been in the sea.
A bad smell that counts as air pollution3 panels. Effect: a whole street of people, each with a clothespin on the nose. Path: wavy lines drift on the breeze, around the corner and down the block. Cause: a heap of garbage, looking a little embarrassed.
A city wakes up inside its own smog3 panels. Effect: the skyline is a row of gray shapes in a murky cloud, and a pigeon cannot find its own roof. Path: the mountains around the city keep the dirty air from spreading. Cause: the morning traffic far below, every tailpipe adding a puff.
Acid rain, followed back up the wind4 panels. Effect: rain falls on a forest lake, and it is more acid than rain should be. It can harm the fish and the insects. Path: the cloud was carried a long way by the wind. Path: far upwind, two gases rose into the air and reacted with water and oxygen to make acids. Cause: a power plant chimney, where burning fuel gave off sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides.
The first smoky skies, in the middle of the 1700s3 panels. Before: a town under a clear sky. Effect: the same town a lifetime later, under gray. Cause: coal, burned to heat the homes and to power the new factories and engines.
Roll call for everything in the sky over one town3 panels. Effect: the sky is gray, and a teacher reads out a list of who is in it. Path: windblown Dust and Wildfire Smoke answer first. They are natural, and they came on the wind. Cause: most of the hands that go up belong to burned coal, oil and natural gas, sent up by cars, airplanes, power plants and factories.
Smoke meets Fog, and they get a new name4 panels. Before: Fog drifts into a city on a still morning. Path: Smoke rises to meet it. Effect: the two of them hang over the streets as one murky cloud, and a sign painter joins their two names into Smog. Cause: the chimneys and tailpipes that Smoke came from.
Specks too small to draw at their real size3 panels. Effect: the air over a busy road is full of something nobody can see. Path: it is made of particles far smaller than the width of a hair. The artist gives up on real size and draws one hair as wide as the panel. Cause: the smoke of a diesel engine.
Three shapes of air pollution share one bus stop3 panels. Effect: the air at a bus stop holds three kinds of pollutant, a gas nobody can see, solid specks and tiny liquid droplets. Path: each one says how it got here, and all three name the street. Cause: the engines going past, burning fuel made from oil.
Water 8
A barnacle crosses an ocean on a bottle3 panels. Effect: on a far shore a newcomer settles in and starts to crowd the locals. Path: it rode across the ocean holding on to a floating bottle. Cause: the bottle, which should never have been in the sea.
A fishing net that keeps fishing with nobody aboard3 panels. Effect: a net drifts through the sea and goes on catching fish for no one. Path: the currents carry it wherever they go. Cause: a boat that lost it, or left it behind.
A plastic bag's long trip, told backward4 panels. Effect: a sea turtle eyes a drifting bag and takes it for food. Path: before that, a river carried the bag to the sea. Path: before that, rain washed it down a storm drain. Cause: before that, somebody let go of it on a sidewalk.
A river that changes color below the fields4 panels. Before: a clear river with fish and water plants. Effect: the river turns bright green with a bloom of algae. The bloom blocks the light and leaves less oxygen in the water. Path: rain washed something into the stream that makes plants grow. Cause: fertilizer, spread on a field in a larger amount than the crop could use.
A river with a fever4 panels. Before: a cold river, and fish that can live only in cold water. Effect: the river runs warm, and the fish eggs do not develop as they should. Path: the warm water comes out of a pipe upstream. Cause: a power plant that takes in river water to cool itself and gives it back heated.
A sailor looks for the island of trash and finds soup4 panels. Effect: the sailor expects an island of garbage and sees almost nothing. The plastic is in pieces smaller than a pencil eraser, like pepper flakes in soup. Path: a ring of turning ocean currents pulled it all into one region. Path: sun and waves broke the bottles and bags into smaller and smaller pieces. Cause: plastic that reached the sea from land.
One drip of oil under a parked car4 panels. Effect: oil floats on a creek at the edge of town. Path: it came out of a pipe that leads from a storm drain. Path: rain carried it along the street to that drain. Cause: a parked car, dripping one drop at a time.
The storm drain everybody thought led to a cleaning plant3 panels. Effect: a stream full of leaves, litter and what a dog left behind. Path: the storm drain on the street empties straight into the stream. Cause: the gutter, where all of it was left for the rain.
Land 6
A hill that grows by the truckload3 panels. Effect: a hill outside town is taller than it was last year. It is a landfill. Path: garbage trucks climb it all day. Cause: a row of bins at the curb, each full of things that were used once.
A landfill burps3 panels. Effect: a hill of buried trash lets out methane, a greenhouse gas. Path: under the hill, food waste is slowly decomposing. Cause: one lunch that nobody finished, and a great many like it.
A loop of string on a forest path3 panels. Effect: a bird hops in a circle and cannot move freely. Something is wound around its foot. Path: the bird picked it up while looking for food on the path. Cause: a length of string that someone dropped and did not go back for.
A sprayed field, three meals later4 panels. Effect: a hawk carries more pesticide in its body than anyone else in the strip. Path: it ate many mice, and each mouse had stored a little in its fat. Path: each mouse had eaten many seeds with a trace of it on them. Cause: a field of plants, sprayed.
A wrapper that outlasts the picnic3 panels. Effect: a bird swallows something bright and feels full, though it has eaten no food at all. Path: the wind rolled the bright thing across a field. Cause: a candy wrapper left on the grass when the picnic went home.
Rain brews a tea nobody ordered3 panels. Effect: a liquid nobody wants reaches the water held in the ground. Path: rain trickled down through a heap of trash, picking up something harmful from every layer. Cause: garbage dumped on open ground, with no liner under it to hold the liquid back.
Light 7
A city blackbird's alarm clock3 panels. Before: a blackbird in the country wakes and sings at dawn. Effect: its cousin in the city is up and singing hours earlier, in the dark. Cause: a streetlight beside its tree and the traffic under it, neither of which ever switches off.
A sea turtle guided by the moon meets a brighter light4 panels. Before: a sea turtle swims by moonlight. Effect: it turns the wrong way and loses its course. Path: a glow reaches out over the water from the shore. Cause: a seafront with every lamp left on all night.
A streetlight moves into a bedroom3 panels. Effect: at midnight a bedroom is bright enough to read in, and nobody asked for it. Path: the light comes in at the window from across the road. Cause: a streetlight with no shield, lighting the houses as well as the street. A caption gives the name for it, light trespass.
A town that cannot see the stars4 panels. Before: a grandmother's drawing of the night sky over this town, crowded with stars. Effect: the same sky tonight, with a handful of stars and a dull glow. Path: light climbs from the streets into the air above the town. Cause: streetlamps, signs and buildings that send their light up as well as down.
Glare, Clutter and Trespass, three lights that overdo it4 panels. Effect: Glare is so bright that a driver has to squint. Effect: Clutter is so many signs in one place that none of them can be read. Effect: Trespass spills over a fence into a yard that wanted to be dark. Cause: outdoor lights that are brighter, more crowded or wider than the job needs.
Migrating birds and a tower with every light on3 panels. Before: a flock flies at night, guided by the moon. Effect: over the city the birds get confused and lose their way. Cause: an office tower, empty, with every floor lit.
Moths at a porch light that never goes off3 panels. Effect: a bird that eats insects finds very few in the dark garden. Path: the insects were drawn away, to something bright. Cause: a porch light left on all night, with a cloud of moths around it.
Noise 7
A bluebird nest box beside something loud4 panels. Before: last year a nest box was full of chicks. Effect: this year the same box holds fewer. Path: the sound reaches the box all day, drawn as jagged lines. Cause: a new road beside the field, with trucks on it from morning to night.
A caterpillar's heartbeat, drawn as a zigzag3 panels. Before: a caterpillar on a leaf, its heartbeat a calm, slow line. Effect: the line jumps and races. Cause: a power lawn mower, at about 90 decibels, coming closer.
A decibel ladder from rustling leaves to a siren3 panels. Before: the bottom rung is rustling leaves, at 20 to 30 decibels. Effect: a red line crosses the ladder at 85. Sound at or above it can harm ears. Cause: the rungs above the line are a power lawn mower at 90, a subway train at 90 to 115 and a siren at 120 to 140.
A dolphin's echo comes back scrambled3 panels. Before: a dolphin sends out a sound and listens for the echo. That is how it finds things, and the name for it is echolocation. Effect: the echo comes back as a scribble, and the dolphin cannot tell where anything is. Cause: a drill at work on the sea floor.
A small bird's best song is lost under a jackhammer3 panels. Before: a bird sings to attract a mate, and the notes float across the park. Effect: the notes are flattened in midair. No other bird turns its head. Cause: a jackhammer on a construction site across the street.
A whale whose call cannot get through3 panels. Before: two whales call to each other across the water. Effect: one call is drawn as a line that breaks apart halfway, and the other whale hears nothing. Cause: the engine of a ship passing overhead.
Blasts of sound that look for oil under the sea3 panels. Effect: a pod of whales changes the way it behaves. Path: pulses of sound are shot down to the ocean floor. Cause: a survey ship towing air guns, searching for oil and gas deep under the seabed.
How it works
These comic book ideas on pollution take one kind each: Air, Water, Land, Light or Noise. Every strip shows an effect, then the path the pollutant took, and ends on the cause.
Read the full guide
Effect, path, cause
Most of these pollution comic ideas run backward, like a mystery. The first panel shows what has gone wrong: a river turned green, a sky with no stars. The middle panels follow the pollutant back along its path, by wind, rain, river or current. The last panel shows where it started, drawn small enough to name: one tailpipe, one drain, one lamp.
For a comic book
Give each strip a page. Five pages, one for each kind of pollution, make a book. Leave the moral out.
Draw sound and light as lines. Jagged lines read as noise, and rays that point up read as wasted light.
Questions and answers
How do you make a comic about pollution?
Pick one kind, such as water pollution. Draw the effect first, then one or two panels for the path the pollutant took, and end on the cause. Three or four panels are enough.
What are the main types of pollution?
National Geographic has an entry for each of five: air, water, land, light and noise pollution. It defines pollution as harmful materials being put into the environment.
What is an easy pollution comic idea?
One drip of oil under a parked car. Rain carries it along the street to a storm drain, the drain empties into a creek, and the strip is four panels with one color to follow.
What is a funny pollution comic idea?
A landfill that burps, Smoke and Fog meeting and getting the new name Smog, or a whole street of people with clothespins on their noses and one embarrassed heap of garbage.