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

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The Palgrave Handbook of Twentieth and Twenty-First Century Literature and Science

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Abstract

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.

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Acknowledgements

My sincere thanks to Susan Gaines of the Fiction Meets Science research group, who organized an outstanding meeting—Narrating Science: The Power of Stories in the twenty-first Century—in Toronto in 2017. The participants at that meeting, including Catherine Bush, David K. Hecht, David A Kirby, and Joanna Radin, were a delight to hear from and talk to. Special thanks to Priscilla Wald, a formative intellectual influence for me, who also turned out to be an ideal conference participant and one of the kindest, most generous academics I have ever met.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, SK, Canada

    Lindsey Michael Banco

Authors
  1. Lindsey Michael Banco
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of California, Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA, USA

    Neel Ahuja

  2. University of Wisconsin–Madison, Madison, WI, USA

    Monique Allewaert

  3. North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, USA

    Lindsey Andrews

  4. Marquette University, Milwaukee, WI, USA

    Gerry Canavan

  5. Southwestern University, Georgetown, TX, USA

    Rebecca Evans

  6. Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, USA

    Nihad M. Farooq

  7. University at Albany, State University of New York, Albany, NY, USA

    Erica Fretwell

  8. University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

    Nicholas Gaskill

  9. University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA

    Patrick Jagoda

  10. Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH, USA

    Erin Gentry Lamb

  11. Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA, USA

    Jennifer Rhee

  12. University of Massachusetts Amherst, Amherst, MA, USA

    Britt Rusert

  13. University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, USA

    Matthew A. Taylor

  14. Duke University, Durham, NC, USA

    Aarthi Vadde

  15. Duke University, Durham, NC, USA

    Priscilla Wald

  16. North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, USA

    Rebecca Walsh

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Banco, L.M. (2020). Graphic Bombs: Scientific Knowledge and the Manhattan Project in Comic Books. In: Ahuja, N., et al. The Palgrave Handbook of Twentieth and Twenty-First Century Literature and Science. Palgrave Handbooks of Literature and Science. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-48244-2_33

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