Jonathan Hickman has finally done what I wanted with Manhattan Projects - write two consecutive issues that flow into each other. While I’ve been enjoying the alternate world of Manhattan Projects, I was growing a bit impatient with the disjointed storytelling. I don’t mind single issue stories - I think they can fit in quite well when told with a certain structure. But it was starting to feel as though each issue of Manhattan Projects was going to contain more and world building without ever exploring the consequences of such a world.
This issue continues the story in the last issue’s prologue involving the aliens that General Leslie Groves was meeting with in the desert. I loved Hickman’s sense of humor in the previous issue as the alien said one thing in english to the scientists and another thing to the aliens that came along. Hickman continued that thread in this issue. In a lot of ways Oppenheimer is the star of this issue, a surprise because I thought Einstein would be the focus after what we learned last month about the monolith. We get a huge payoff on Oppenheimer’s multiple personality setup which, until now, was just used to provide a way for the character to have internal asides.
Hickman continues to do something really unique with this series. It’s important to remember that we’re only five issues in and it took dozens of issues for his Fantastic Four series to begin paying off on all that he had set up when he first started his run. Now that the issues seem to follow from one to another, I think it’ll take me a few more issues to really get a grip on where Hickman is going with the series. However, if I had one wish it would be to see more of each of the characters per issue. He’s created some really quirky versions of these famous people and I’d like to see them get a little more time each.
The art continues to be top notch and really give a lot of punch to Hickman’s writing.
