Writer Blocks - The Manhattan Projects

It was 2012 and I was at the New York Comic Con.  The first anthology work I had ever submitted had just been published and I had successfully pitched on a work-for-hire gig that would be picked-up by Hound Comics.  To make the long weekend even better, Grant Morrison, the man whose work got me back into reading and writing comics after too long of an absence, was going to be on numerous panels, the best of which was a writer’s panel with Brian K Vaughan and some guy named Jonathan Hickman.

While Vaughan was an excellent speaker and listening to Morrison discuss story and craft was like having a brief audience with an Earthbound God, it was what Jonathan Hickman had to say that really stuck with me.  He and I had some similarities:  we were both in our late 30’s, married, two kids, and stuck in a career we were slowly growing to hate and felt like we were wasting away any talent we may have to contribute to the world.  And six years earlier, this guy had followed his dream.  He had been nominated for a few Eisner Awards and was re-launching the flagship of the Marvel Universe – The Avengers!  Naturally, on the train ride home I read my just-purchased copy of The Manhattan Projects #1, and from that moment Jonathan Hickman became a writer I follow, admire, and constantly learn from.



The Manhattan Projects is historical fiction, and historical fiction usually comes in two varieties: a fictionalized account of what happened behind the scenes of a world event, keeping that event and its ramifications intact, or an alternate history tale, with a historical event going in a different direction and throwing the world into chaos.  What Hickman and collaborator Nick Pitarra have done in The Manhattan Projects is blend both of these plot devices, creating a world of science populated by known geniuses like Einstein, Oppenheimer and Feynman along with Yuri Gagarin, William Westmoreland, JFK, LBJ, and FDR, among others.  This creates a fun house mirror effect where what we’re reading in the book is a distorted version of famous events throughout history.



The hallmark of a Jonathan Hickman comic is the intricate plot, and while The Manhattan Projects has a lot of humor, and does operate within the confines of historical context, there are plenty of plot twists, set-ups, reveals, seeds, Easter eggs, whatever term you want to use.  The story unfolds slowly, building in complexity through issue #25, which ends the first major movement of the work. The second part begins in March of 2015 and Hickman has promised a few changes.  Instead of the sprawling ensemble cast we’ll get to see more personal narratives about a few characters at a time.  Change is good, but I hope he leaves the Dune-inspired quotes from the mythical book Clavis Aurea: The Recorded Feynman that lend so much subtext to what is happening in the issue. 

Hickman’s work has been criticized as “text bookish”, and I can see why, but that’s what I love about this book in particular.  I don’t want my fiction spoon fed to me when I read or when I write, and I don’t mind looking-up references to political leaders or event dates or even historical footage to gain a deeper understanding of what Hickman and Pitarra are doing in The Manhattan Projects.

That’s the type of work I want to create.

If only Jonathan Hickman hadn’t had the courage to take a leap of faith and chase his dreams first.

- Aloha -