Redniss' book is different than many other graphic novels. It's not structured in panels, but in full page illustrations, sometimes accompanied by dense, descriptive text. It includes many types of artwork, from cyanotype printing (used to achieve a look similar to a radioactive glow), photos, grave rubbings, sketches, and more. There is a Chernobyl Situational Map and photos of mutant flowers. It's absolutely stunning.
Radioactive is described as the story of Marie & Pierre Curie, but that's more of a starting point than the arc of the whole story. Pierre & Marie Curie's partnership was hugely productive, but Marie lived a full life after her husband's untimely death (including earning herself a second Nobel Prize). She raised seriously amazing scientist children and inspired other scientists and changed the world.
She slept with a bottle of lightly glowing radium next to her bed. Her clothes and skin glowed. She had an affair with her husband's former student. She won two Nobel Prizes. During World War I, she made France mobile X-labs. She died a slow, painful death due to radiation exposure, working to the last as she described her "crisis and pus."
Redniss used Marie Curie's life as the centerpoint of her web, but she goes well beyond the lives of the Curies to describe just how much her work has inspired and influenced other people and how much it has impacted the world. Her work helped develop chemotherapy, treatment still used by cancer treatments today. Conversely, it led to significant work on the development of the atomic bomb. Many people in the world became ill or died due to their work with radium; others were inspired by it to study science.
I admit that sometimes this book could be hard for me to follow, and sometimes I had difficulty finding the thread between the Curie storyline and others. But I really, really enjoyed this book. The artwork is stunning, almost hypnotic. Curie's life is fascinating, her work ground-breaking. And it was so inspiring to read about all these truly amazing women.