Few writers in the early months of the atomic age emphasized the dangers posed by the new weapon as strongly as Will Eisner, who depicted the end of the world through nuclear terrorism in his newspaper comic strip The Spirit, February 3, 1946. Back at Wildwood…-and before the eyes of horrified people for miles around, the cabin, then the mountain, disappear in an atomic explosion that grows and grows and grows until….
” …Billions of miles away, in the dark reaches of outer space, the inhabitants of a planet pause to notice a tiny flash that for a moment brightens the whole sky. Where there was once a huge planet teeming with life and people there is now nothing…absolutely nothing!! “ “See that celestial explosion Glugg?” “Shhh… Zogk has just discovered the secret of making fire! The medicine men say that it will enable us to rule supreme over all the other animals on our Earth! They are now deciding whether to share the secret with the other tribes in valley or keep it until we can work out a lasting peace!!” In a scene reflecting early postwar debates over who should own the new technology, Eisner ironically has the death of the earth witnessed by primitive humans on another world who are busy creating their own arms race, then shifts perspective again–
–to remind us that the holocaust we have just witnessed happened, after all, only in a comic strip, but in such a way as to satirize the postwar fad for Atomic cocktails and so forth, reminding us that the cavalier attitude toward the bomb reflected in so much of popular culture could be fatal. “Eat at Joe’s. Food Served with Atomic Speed”
Most people have forgotten that the bikini was named after the site of the first postwar atomic test. Its designer, Louis Réard, thought the bottom-baring daring new swimsuit would have an impact comparable to the bomb.
In 1946 Naval Captain Walter Karig published this fictional account of a future nuclear war to justify the continued relevance of the Navy in the Atomic Age.
It portrays a number of fantastic defensive devices, including this impregnable electronic shield to protect the U.S. from enemy missiles, decades before Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative.
Such bizarre fantasies were, of course, embraced in popular media as well. A war comic book entitled Attack cashed in on the craze for atomic weapons in the early fifties by retitling itself Atomic Attack.
This one contained a story featuring a broad array of atomic weapons.
including atomic machine guns and atomic grenades.
Clearly the author has not bothered to adapt his style to the new weapons. Three missiles have struck one submarine, doing it serious damage.
A recurrent theme of the early fifties was atomic secrecy. The Claus Fuchs case, then the Rosenberg trial and execution, led to a large number of fictional depictions of atomic spy cases. Despite the best efforts of the FBI, the Soviet Union succeeded in creating–first–an atomic bomb and then, with breathtaking rapidity–a hydrogen bomb.
