Review by Woodrow Phoenix

A depressingly cynical episode in the ongoing story of unequal power relations between employees and management in the workplace is the theme of Radium Girls. Radium is one of the better-known radioactive elements, mainly because the dramatic story of Marie Curie is well known. Curie isolated Radium in 1902, and it became a big money maker for its amazing luminous properties, painted onto dials, clock faces and instrumentation. It was some years later before the deadliness of the radiation emitted by Radium became evident, and Curie’s early death was due to that radioactivity. Her body was so poisoned by radiation that her coffin was lined with lead.

Radium Girls is the true story of a group of young women, hired to work in a New Jersey factory in the USA to do the delicate work of painting the dials of timepieces with a new miracle paint that made them glow in the dark. They were all trained to apply the paint by wetting the tips of their tiny brushes with spit to achieve sharp brushstrokes, which meant continually putting small amounts of radium in their mouths, all day, every day. Writer/artist Cy (Cyrielle Evrard) draws this book in an elegantly stylised 1920s way appropriate to the times. It’s a clever choice giving the events the kind of offhand jazzy glamour that these women must have felt at the beginning, before the damage the radium wrought in their bodies begins to show. A darkly funny scene when they go as a group to the cinema makes them realise their skins are becoming luminous. The following sickness and deterioration is not so funny when the company realises how toxic their product is and puts profits first by denying all responsibility.

This is an English translation of a book originally published in French, which might explain the woodenness of the dialogue. Cy explains in her afterword that she based this on the bestseller The Radium Girls by Kate Moore, which details the tragic events and the court cases that followed. Labour laws in the US were changed and safety standards improved, although too late for those women who lost their lives. Radium Girls won the BD Lectors (comics readers) Prize in France in 2021. It’s an interesting read in a well-designed package that gives an extra jolt to the reader if you see the cover with the lights off. Ingenious.