An interesting and melancholy look into the life of the Radium Girls, a group of women workers who worked with radium in the 1920's. This graphic novel was a light retelling of the events that transpired in their short lives. I look forward to researching more of what took place during that time and this book was a good prompt to that start.

A graphic novel that tells the story of the so-called "radium girls," the all female workforce whose premature deaths revealed the danger of radium in consumer products. The artwork in the 20s style, which lends a nice sense of time and place. I was already very familiar with the radium girls so I thought the story made sense, but I am not sure if this telling would be clear without that background information as the characters all look very similar and there are big jumps in time.

Such a devastating story Radium Girls is. I knew something about the historical event, but not enough and thus I wanted to read this. The story is set in the early 20th century. In Orange, New Jersey these girls get jobs at a clock firm and they paint watch dials with radioactive powder. They dip the brushes in their mouths and soon their teeth are falling and one after the other they die, but the manufacturer says the greenish glow is perfectly normal. Of course the firm knew to some extent, but didn't care enough and at the same time women didn't have enough power to fight back at the time. Gladly this incident changed the world, even though it took time. Somehow it just surprises me how gullible people were and how like smoking cigarettes made no one wonder about its safety. Carbon monoxide wasn't anything new. Same with paint. Or was it because people trusted authorities too much to ever wonder? Who knows.

I love the art and how well the colors radiate basically (pun intended). The colored pencil approach is wonderful and soft with the eerie color palette. The style is also wonderful in how it captures its time and how the girls look and what they wear. I just wish Cy would've told us more about the law procedures instead of just info dumping at the back. The story felt axed because of it. Still, this was interesting and artistically speaking very nice.