Review by Ian Keogh

With Oppenheimer a surprising monster hit in the cinemas during 2023, Abrams couldn’t have picked a better time for their English translation of a what was originally published in France. Yet while the timing was perfect, this comprehensive retelling of how the atomic bomb was developed is thoroughly deserving of a wider audience irrespective of any connection.

Writers Didier Alcante and Laurent-Frédéric Bollée treat historical events as if a TV drama switching between the major figures, starting with individuals who gradually coalesce into a team in a desperate race where only a few at the time truly understood the consequences.

They begin with a prologue establishing how some physicists involved left their homelands as the persecutions of fascism became the prevailing ideal in Europe during the 1930s. They then switch to life in the Japanese city of Hiroshima in 1938, instituting a sense of foreboding. Giving the element uranium a narrative voice is a fanciful touch, but scene after scene is astutely positioned, and toward the end the use of the uranium voice clarifies. We see the first fears among the select few able to understand uranium’s possibilities, and hover over the inaugural meeting of Nazi Germany’s leading physicists. Some being torn between allegiance to a homeland to the purity of science is well brought out.

Those aware of Canadian artist Denis Rodier’s back catalogue of superhero standbys will be astonished at the detailed naturalism he brings to what for a long time is essentially one conversation following another. When there’s the chance to draw a landscape with some buildings, such as a scene in Hiroshima or what was then Czechoslovakia it’s composed with delicacy and beauty. The same elegance applies to smaller scene-setting illustrations at the top of pages, and when wartime action is needed, Rodier’s experience serves him well., while his eventual scenes of devastation are horrifically memorable.

With careers in politics and journalism prior to comics, the writers have an instinct for small details giving an impression of a place. A scene noting the construction of a ski slope and the amount of condoms supplied to the Los Alamos development facility is a brief sequence, yet offers a different view of scientists working at the top secret location. It also serves to highlight the line between army expectations and dealing with civilians.

While the atomic bomb takes its journey from abstraction to fulfilment, other matters fall under the spotlight to provide action contrast, primarily attempts to sabotage Germany’s heavy water research, for which appalling ethical decisions about the greater good are taken. It’s not the only time, and the persistence of Leo Szilard, the man who conducted the first nuclear chain reaction, attempting to warn of the possible horrors to be unleashed is returned to time and again.

The detail is immense, yet such is the skill of the authors, and of Rodier, that there’s never a moment when readers are left wondering who someone is. The deep political machinations are clearly delivered, and there’s a good dramatic sense for the introduction of people who’ll later become important, such as Harry Truman, first seen bemoaning no-one knows who he is when President Roosevelt is re-elected. Brief dramatic licence is employed with the use of a fictional Japanese family, and some might quibble with Niels Bohr’s omission, but this is nevertheless an immense work astonishingly well realised.

Anyone who enjoyed Oppenheimer ought to be attracted by a nuanced historical presentation offering a wider perspective on an era-defining weapon.