Involving all the great scientists of the era (Einstein, Fermi, Oppenheimer etc..), this imaginative comic series takes us through the development of the atomic bomb while they also indulged in other projects. Without giving too much away, they all have foibles and unusual back stories and this leads to all sorts of trouble. It’s interesting and original while the artwork is reasonably clear. Worth a look.

It would have been less stars, but I was intrigued by the ending so much.   That ending makes me think this series might have promise, but I was so 'meh' about everything else that this won't be a priority for now.

Ambitious and abandoned is how I would describe this graphic novel. The premise of this short-lived Marvel series was that S.H.I.E.L.D., the spy organization founded after WWII to hunt down Communists and other insurgents, is actually a ancient secret society which has defended the Earth from alien threats since at least 2620 BC. Every famous scientist, artist, or mystic you can think of was a member, including Da Vinci, Galileo, Isaac Newton, Nostradamus, and Nikola Tesla. More modern members include Howard Stark, the father of Tony (Iron Man) Stark, and Nathaniel Richards, the father of Reed (Mr. Fantastic) Richards.

The plot jumps all around and throws in all manner of twists including a war between immortals Newton and Da Vinci over the fate of humanity, a time traveling Tesla who is married to a woman who can turn into a bird (or something), a Chinese scholar named Zhang Heng who hid a baby Celestial, and lots of vague references to ominous sounding things like the Greater Science, the Hidden Arts, and the Human Machine.

It all seems very promising, and Dustin Weaver's illustrations are excellent, but it appears not to have been the hit Marvel hopped it would be and the project was quietly abandoned. Hickman has occasionally dropped references to the deep history of S.H.I.E.L.D. in his other Marvel work, suggesting his has not given up on the idea, but we will probably never see a continuation of the series big enough to do justice to the scope of the premise.

I first learned of Jonathan Hickman's Manhattan Projects about five years ago. The premise of the effort to build the first atomic bomb being a cover for a group of the world's leading scientists to engage in some truly gonzo activities had me hooked from the start. I purchased the first three volumes quickly, and then the next two as they were published. Yet for all of the fun of the basic idea, the series seemed to be losing steam, and when I learned that the delayed sixth volume was going to focus exclusively on my least favorite main character -- the dog-obsessed Yuri Gagarin -- I pretty much gave up on it.

Yeah, that was a mistake.

The sixth volume begins where the fifth volume leaves off, with the cosmonaut and Projects member docking at an intergalactic trading outpost. Still searching for his dog Laika, he quickly ends up in court for a parking violation, which proves to be the first of a series of misadventures involving a corrupt judge, a robot incapable of telling the truth, and a freed slave who wants to use macro spores to destroy the his enslavers' civilization. It's all edgy and wacky in a way that the series hasn't been for some time, and I finished it with my excitement for the series restored. Keep 'em coming, Hickman!