This month in Jonathan Hickman‘s The Manhattan Projects, a bunch of generally unlikable people dig themselves even farther into a crappy situation while remaining oblivious. Here’s the description from Image:

“THE ROSE BRIDGE”
The Life and Death of Albert Einstein. 

The blockbuster FEEL GOOD, BAD SCIENCE series continues in THE MANHATTAN PROJECTS #4: THE ROSE BRIDGE!

I’m noticing some patterns developing in this book. The first, more obvious one, is that everyone has secrets. It makes sense, because the whole series is based around the secret history of a secret project that everyone thinks they know about. The second pattern is the replacement of people by their clones and/or twins. The real Robert Oppenheimer was replaced by his twin brother. Franklin Roosevelt died, but was brought back as an A.I. And now in issue 4….

Well, the pattern continues, but I won’t spoil it with names.

Jonathan Hickman’s writing is pretty good. The world he’s created is definitely an interesting one, but there’s still nothing really gripping about the storyline in the book’s present, and the emerging pattern I mentioned lessens the impact of the plot twist. However, the dialogue in the alien scene at the start of the issue is great. In fact, that scene is the issue’s most interesting one, story-wise. Everything else is just more of the same: slowly pulling back the curtain to reveal more secrets, but with very little forward momentum.

I’ve mentioned in reviews for other series that some artists have a knack for making characters look incredibly flawed. At the time I was referring to Travel Foreman‘s work on Animal Man, but Nick Pitarra does the same thing here, and it’s a great match for the book’s characters and tone. Specific to this issue, his depiction of what I’m going to refer to as ectoplasm is also cool. Jordie Bellaire‘s colors are absolutely crucial here, particularly the use of a dichromatic scheme to denote scenes in the past, a technique that becomes even more important toward the issue’s end.

The Manhattan Projects #4 isn’t bad; it’s just not very exciting, and I’m still waiting for the series’ story to really take off. When a trick with the coloring is the coolest part of the issue, something needs to change.

3/5