Building the Brooklyn Bridge, in Graphic Detail

Comic book writer Peter J. Tomasi has the fervor of an evangelist in discussing the laborers and engineers responsible for the Brooklyn Bridge.

“It’s important to show the people who built these things as real, breathing people, who suffered and succeeded and did the impossible,” he said in an interview. “They carved the air. They made something from nothing.”

Tomasi’s passion has resulted in the graphic novel, “The Bridge: How the Roeblings Connected Brooklyn to New York.” As its subtitle suggests, this retelling of the origin of the famous suspension bridge shines a spotlight on the family who made it possible: German-American engineer John A. Roebling, his son Washington A. Roebling and Washington Roebling’s wife, Emily Warren Roebling.

The book, which will be published by Abrams ComicArts on April 17, is drawn by Sara DuVall, colored by Gabriel Eltaeb and John Kalisz and lettered by Rob Leigh. It opens in 1852 with a scene in the East River, where ice is impeding the ferry on which the Roeblings are traveling. They join forces to construct an icebreaker to save the day. It is one of the few relaxed interactions between father and son. Washington’s struggle to forge his own path was a part of the story that appealed to him, Tomasi said.

The younger Roebling had reason to feel stifled. He had distinguished himself at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and in the military. “He was in every major Civil War battle,” Tomasi said. “The fact that he survived was mind-boggling. He went from that to the pressures of living in the shadow of his father.” The book’s depiction of his wartime exploits — which included his helping to construct pontoon bridges — is a necessary digression: he meets his wife, Emily, through her brother, Gen. G.K. Warren, under whom he served.

With the principal players in place, “The Bridge” quickly shifts to 1869, the beginning of construction. Tomasi and DuVall depict the highs and lows: the doubt of the trustees overseeing the project, the escalating cost, the political corruption, the shady contractors and suppliers and the dangers to the workers. Near the start, the elder Roebling has what proves to be a fatal accident on a Fulton Street pier in Brooklyn: a ferry’s hull pushes against the dock, crushing his foot. Within a month, he was dead.

“The Bridge” meticulously depicts the enormity of the project, from meeting room intrigues to the sometimes perilous construction site. A scene in which the trustees consider naming the younger Roebling chief engineer (Their question: “You’ve never supervised anything of this scale and magnitude, Mr. Roebling, is that right?” His response: “No one has.”) is followed a few pages later by a presentation on caissons — hollow, waterproof boxes made of wood and iron and filled with compressed air that allow workers to dig the riverbed. Roebling notes, “These will be the largest caissons ever built.”

The book is DuVall’s debut as a graphic novelist. She was approached during her final year at the School of Visual Arts. “'How do you feel about drawing bridges?'” she recalled being asked. “I had never, never actually drawn many bridges before, but I didn’t want to turn it down,” she said. One of her favorite scenes is when Roebling and the workers get to the bedrock for the first time, for which Tomasi supplied reference images. “It looked so eerie,” she said. “I can’t believe people worked down there.”

Reviews of “The Bridge” have been favorable. “Rather than being a story of a singular genius overcoming adversity, the book is a paean to collaboration,” noted Publishers Weekly. “Iconic structures often have fascinating stories behind them, but rarely do the tellings emphasize the human as this one does.”

It makes sense that this presentation of events, as conveyed by Tomasi, sounds like the makings of a Hollywood biopic. It was conceived as a screenplay. “I wanted to write this story so I could see it visualized by a filmmaker,” he said.

The inspiration for the project was the George Washington Bridge, which Tomasi could see from his childhood bedroom. He turned his attention to the Brooklyn Bridge in the mid-1990s, but found excuses not to pursue it. “Once 9/11 happened, it really set my focus,” he said. “I wanted to write something uplifting and hopeful.”

A reader can imagine a tense action scene when an excavation water chamber is clogged and Roebling dives in to clear it. Upon reading the news, his wife asks, “Do you have a death wish?” He tells her: “I need to lead by example, Em. You know the dangers ahead better than anyone. They need to be fearless for $2 a day.” It proves to be a harbinger of doom: Many of the laborers — and Roebling himself — would be stricken with decompression sickness or “caisson disease.” “The slightest noise and intense lights would set him on edge. His nerves would go crazy,” Tomasi said. Roebling “had intense pain that he would have to deal with from his mid-30s until he died.”

When Roebling gets the disease (which causes him intermittent paralysis and blindness), at about the book’s halfway point, his wife becomes his eyes and ears. He communicates details involving the bridge’s towers, the suspension cables, the anchorages, the roadways and the electrics for her to administer. The reaction to her role by trustees and workers evolves from shock to bemusement to acceptance.

Tomasi and DuVall capture many historic moments: Frank Farrington crossing the span by cable and tipping his hat to the crowd below; Emily Roebling riding a horse-drawn carriage (with a rooster, an apparent symbol of good luck) on completion of the project; and a two-page spread of the Brooklyn Bridge in the glow of fireworks on the night it opened.

But the book ends on a quiet moment of artistic license. Weeks after the official opening, Roebling walks across the bridge with his wife. “You did it, Wash,” she says. He responds: “We did it, Em. Together.”