Rocket to the Moon! by Don Brown (review)

The approaching fiftieth anniversary of the first moon walk is an opportune moment for the debut of Brown's new graphic information series, Big Ideas That Changed the World. Brown moves swiftly from a review of fiery mishaps in early rocketeering (lots of splashy red BOOM frames on display), to attempts by a trio of serious rocket experimenters, inspired by Jules Verne's From the Earth to the Moon, to make a rocket safe and powerful enough to send human into space. Sci-fi meets geopolitics in the gravest possible way as the Cold War competition in space exploration progressed, with the implied goal of military exploitation. Mercury, Gemini, and early Apollo missions prepped hardware and human skills for the "one small step" that handed the crown to NASA and set the stage for grandparents the world over to reminisce about watching the Apollo 11 televised landing. Narrating this engaging overview is the fictionalized voice of Rodman Law, an early twentieth-century stuntman and rocketeer. Although this device is not strictly necessary, Law's remarks cushion the history and technology with a layer of homespun informality: "These guys are about to make history, and they're as cool as a couple of pals saying goodbye after a night of bowling." Brown frequently turns the action over to short sequences of wordless panels, and he peppers the oft-told tale with details that don't always make it to the textbooks, such as the quantity of trash left by visitors on the moon and a transcription of a delightfully gross astronaut conversation over feces on the loose inside the command capsule. Less impressive but nonetheless useful are the included endnotes, multi-media bibliography, author note, and index. EB