So I Read The Manhattan Projects: Volume 2

A 250 word (or less) review of the second collection of The Manhattan Projects
By Jonathan Hickman, Nick Pitarra, and Jordie Bellaire ; Image Comics 

I am a professional Scientist. My research department was founded by an actual member of The Manhattan Project. (Dr. Douglas Harold Copp, look him up.) As such I should be deeply offended by The Manhattan Projects, a comic that implies that the brilliant Scientists of the real life Manhattan Project are a bunch of cannibalistic, murdering, amoral sociopaths performing the Maddest of Sciences. A comic that is deeply insulting to my heroes and my vocation. But, once again, despite myself, I absolutely LOVE this comic. In The Manhattan Projects: Volume 2, the Scientists of The Manhattan Projects encounter their Mad counterparts from the Soviet Union: another secret Science project rife with Nazi prisoner/rocket Scientists, brutalist automatons, squid-aliens from the Tunguska Event, talking Space Dogs, and Communist brains. And instead of fighting the Red Menace, The Manhattan Projects do something ingenious, something that offends the secret cabal of the True world government and leads to a power struggle for the Earth itself. It's more worryingly insane fun from Jonathan Hickman that walks that perfect line of aching sincerity and eyebrow-shrugging fun, which is drawn with the crazy, playful line of Nick Pitarra and coloured with the psychedelic fever hues of Jordie Bellaire. Basically, The Manhattan Projects: Volume 2 is more Bad Science done right. It’s deeply insulting to Scientists, but damn if it isn’t incredible fun.

Word count: 225

Previously:

The Manhattan Projects: Volume 1

So I Read The Manhattan Projects: Volume 1

A 250 word (or less) review of the first volume of The Manhattan Projects.
By Jonathan Hickman and Nick Pitarra, Image Comics

There is nothing in comics, or fiction in general, that aggravates me as much as the trope that scientists are amoral misanthropes who only care about advancing their Science without regard to consequences or ethics. It’s lazy, played out, and untrue.¹ I’m pretty sick of it. The Manhattan Projects: Volume 1 is the first collected edition of an ongoing series about amoral misanthrope scientists using the development of the atomic bomb as a cover story for a kaleidoscope of Mad Science. The comic sees beloved real life scientists, such as Feynman, Einstein, and Oppenheimer, portrayed as villains driven to do terrible things in the name of Science. So The Manhattan Projects is basically a perfect storm of my most hated comic stereotype taken to the extreme. The thing is I kind of LOVE IT. A lot of this can be chalked up to execution: this book is awesome! Hickman’s script is smart, warped, funny, and deranged and Pitarra’s artwork is chaotic and detailed and expressive and vaguely... wrong. I think Volume 1 is also helped by being somewhat tongue-in-cheek. Despite having gravitas and some profoundly heavy and dramatic moments, the book is very transparent about being an exaggerated work of fiction. I also really appreciate that the book doesn’t get bogged down trying to logically rationalize its Mad Science because, honestly, that would just be distracting and ancillary to the story. Despite myself, The Manhattan Projects: Volume 1 is a Mad Science exploitation comic I can heartily recommend.

Word count: 248

1: Full disclosure: I am a Scientist by profession. Also: I own both Feynman autobiographies.


Previously:
So I Read The Nightly News
So I Read The Red Wing
So I Read Transhumanism
So I Read Pax Romana