Nuke Pop: Popular Culture Images of Nuclear War • Credits

Atomic Age Nostalgia

Atomic Age Nostalgia
Comic cover of person fighting person in radiation suit on a screen at a drive in theatre and text, Welcome to the 1950s. Welcome to the Atomic Age. By Frank Lovece, Mike Okamoto and Al Williamson.
In the early nineties, nuclear war imagery became highly self-conscious and self-referential. One of the more interesting recent trends was the bomb as nostalgia, themes from the forties and fifties combined with atomic bomb imagery.
The 1991 series, Atomic Age, archly incorporates period artifacts such as Sputnik and this drive-in movie.
Comic panel with man driving vehicle with pile of old tech refuse on passenger's seat
Look at this frame from Hard Boiled comics.
Now zoom in on the fast-food containers on the front seat. One is labelled with the code name of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima: "Little Boy" and the other bears the name of the Nagasaki bomb: "Fat Man."
Now zoom in on the fast-food containers on the front seat. One is labelled with the code name of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima: “Little Boy” and the other bears the name of the Nagasaki bomb: “Fat Man.”
Model wearing jacket in ad with text and photo of J. Rob't Oppenheimer.
Consider this ad from a Fall, 1988 J. Crew catalog, featuring “a jacket that might have been worn by J. Rob’t Oppenheimer at Los Alamos.
Ad campaign with jeans and word, def. and then photo of mushroom cloud with word, dumb.
In contrast, the Def Jeans company ran an ad campaign on television and in print media contrasting their “def” jeans with nuclear war as “dumb.”
Book cover with mushroom cloud illustration and two animal characters holding umbrellas and watching the explosion with text, Krazy Kat, Jay Cantor - A novel in five panels.
Of the several modern novels about the Manhattan Project and J. Robert Oppenheimer, Jay Cantor’s Krazy Kat is both the most unusual and most interesting, using old comic strip characters to develop Oppenheimer’s famous quotation–“The scientists have known sin”–to argue that the opening of the atomic age marked a fall from grace into guilty self-knowledge.
Comic panel with text, Look out it's teh Nuclear Family; cartoon person on the phone yelling, You mean Debbie - Our Debbie - Nuked the neighbors can - Again?! I'll be home right away! Alert status: Condition Red! 1987 by Norman Dog and Larry Gonck
This strip from a very interesting comic book devoted entirely to the theme of nuclear war (itchy Planet) treats nuclear war as a fifties family situation comedy, with father and daughter taking out their frustrations on each other with nuclear missiles.
Comic cover with Homer Simpson dressed as superhero with cape and the text, Radioactive Man - Bart Simpson's Favorite Comic Book! Introducing the Greatest hero of them all! Don't miss the Origin of Radioactive Man!
America’s favorite nuclear technician, Homer Simpson, was transformed into a nostalgic atomic hero in Radioactive Man (1993). It bears a phony cover date of “Nov 1952.”
Comic book cover with nuclear mushroom cloud, iconic Marilyn Monroe photo in white dress with skirt flying up and the title, Alien Encounters - price $1.75
But the ultimate in ironic nuclear nostalgia is undoubtedly this comic book cover.

Next: Nuclear record jackets