Trinity

January 30, 2012
Although billed as “the first-ever graphic novel to tell the story of the atomic bomb,” Jim Ottaviani’s Fallout did the same thing 10 years ago, and was much better written. Picking on an author for what marketing chooses to say isn’t fair, but presumably marketing didn’t choose the flat illustrations, heavy use of captions, and stiff, static panels of talking heads. The text is confusing to follow, and the wooden panels are reminiscent of clip art. All the famous players in this tale are shown—Fermi, Oppenheimer, Fat Man, and Little Boy—but in such compressed form that little drama emerges. Facts are thrown so rapidly that there is no story, no recognizable characters to follow, or personalities to relate to, just caption after caption.

Starred review from February 1, 2012
Powerfully understated in both text and art, this matter-of-fact account of the atom bomb's development renders scientific complexity intelligible. There is no preaching here, so readers must ponder the illustrations of apocalyptic devastation in order to process the full implications of nuclear warfare. The framing of the narrative begins with the invocation of Prometheus, who took fire from the gods and gave it to mankind ("knowledge for which we weren't ready"), and ends with the ominous: "If radiation were somehow visible...we would see this power everywhere we looked. We would see it in the dirt, in our bones, in the air and the water...And we would remember that this atomic force is a force of nature. As innocent as an earthquake. As oblivious as the sun. It will outlast our dreams." The artistry of Fetter-Vorm, who has graphically adapted Beowulf and Moby-Dick, among other works, complements his stark prophecy, as it details the bomb's development from the discovery of radioactivity by Marie Curie through the Manhattan Project led by leftist physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, through the decision by President Harry Truman to employ Hiroshima as not only a military target but a "test site." The narrative leaves readers with the sense that few of those involved in the development or deployment of the bomb had a sense of the almost unimaginable devastation that would result. The use of the weapon not only caused a rupture in the relationship between Oppenheimer and Truman, it opened a Pandora's box of radiation aftereffects beyond the initial horrors of the bombings (powerfully rendered here). Succeeds as both a graphic primer and a philosophical meditation.

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March 15, 2012
The Manhattan Project receives the comics treatment, and in Fetter-Vorm's capable hands, the straightforward history largely sidelines the outsize personalities who infest it (only Oppenheimer and Groves loom large here) and refrains from portentous rhetoric (e.g., Each of our bodies contains some amount of radioactive material ) until the last dozen pages or so. The page layouts are attractively busy and varied, never crowded and hard to read, while the text proceeds stepwise down each page, never courting confusion by running in circles or zigzagging. In short, Fetter-Vorm's work within the confines of the book's relatively small, six-by-nine-inch format is altogether exemplary. And the writing's as good as the art, making this a strong primer on the A-bomb's development. For those who want to delve more deeply into the matter, there are many good prose-only treatments, of course, not to mention Jim Ottaviani and company's nonpareil first graphic novel on the subject, Fallout (2001).(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)