I'm just going to say it: Jonathan Hickman pisses me off. Everything he writes uses the exact same pseudoscience and cryptic philosophical posturing, with cipher characters defined by one Irresistibly Charming Quirk or Twist whose actions are motivated entirely by Hickman's Next Cool Plot Twist rather than, ya know, actual human desires or anything.
And yet...he does all of that REALLY well. So well, in fact, that you hardly notice unless you are specifically aiming to scrutinize (such as I am). It probably helps that he's also a tremendous art director who gets paired with talented artists and that his books demonstrate such impeccable design sense. But in the process of reading his stories, you get so wrapped up in the big ideas and crazy twists that you don't notice how soulless it is.
The Manhattan Projects is certainly no exception to this. When you break it down, you're like "WTF? This is how a sociopath imitates storytelling." But when you're reading it, you're absolutely carried away and enamored by the strange, surreal, and epic world he's created (with tremendous assistance from Nick Pitarra's creepy-weird artwork).
Damn you, Hickman.
