Graphic Bombs: Scientific Knowledge and the Manhattan Project in Comic Books

• Published in: The Palgrave Handbook of Twentieth and Twenty-First Century Literature and Science pp. 577 - 595
• Main Author: Banco, Lindsey Michael
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: Switzerland Springer International Publishing AG 2020; Springer International Publishing
• Series: Palgrave Handbooks of Literature and Science
• DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-48244-2_33
• ISBN: 9783030482435; 303048243X

Banco provides analysis of visual representations of the Manhattan Project, of atomic scientists, and of nuclear knowledge in a series of comic books and graphic narratives. Focusing on factual, historical depictions of Manhattan Project physicists such as J. Robert Oppenheimer and on the science of nuclear weapons, this chapter briefly examines early comic books from the 1940s and then provides lengthier analyses of more recent graphic narratives by Jim Ottaviani, Jonathan Fetter-Vorm, and others. This chapter argues that paying close attention to strategies of visual representation can reveal how nuclear narratives are created, disseminated, and understood, as well as how knowledge of nuclear science is conceived and circulated.