The Manhattan Projects

Jonathan Hickman and Nick Pitarra launched The Manhattan Projects at Image Comics on 7 March 2012. It imagines that the historical program to build an atomic bomb concealed other, more bizarre experiments. Real scientific reputations become raw material for an alternate history with little interest in reassuring readers.

The comic works by extending a familiar secret: once one hidden project is possible, the doors open onto many others. Each discovery makes the organization seem more capable and less trustworthy.

The series uses the Manhattan Project's real historical gravity to give its fantasy an unsettling frame. Its jokes and grotesque inventions do not erase the ethical question of what powerful institutions may justify in the name of research.

Image described the book as a darker view of history from its first issue. That framing helps explain the tone: intellectual brilliance is never treated as proof of good judgment.

The speculative premise turns classified research into a license for impossible science. Alternate-history devices and hidden programs widen the gap between official history and what the characters are actually doing.

The result is mad science with institutional resources. Experiments are not the work of an isolated eccentric; they are supported by a system that can hide failures and reward excess.

Pitarra's crowded, expressive figures match a setting full of volatile minds. Laboratories and equipment become places of manic activity rather than neutral spaces of reason.

The visual intensity helps the comic shift quickly from historical reference to absurd invention. A familiar name can anchor a scene, then the art pushes it into a version of history that will not stay contained.