Nuke Pop: Popular Culture Images of Nuclear War • Credits

Scout

Scout
Comic magazine cover with a skull, a nuclear explosion, and a tank with text, Timothy Truman's Scout. The word War is on the skull and the words Viva Mexico are painted on the tank.
One of the graphically more interesting comics was Timothy Truman’s Scout. The cover of the issue in which a nuclear weapon is used against Las Vegas is nothing out of the ordinary
Human skull on hill with insects crawling on and around it with text, Scout, I'm on Fire.
but the interior sequence of panels depicting the aftermath of the explosion shows striking originality
Two panels: a cockroach crawling on a human skull and an explosion.
as we simultaneously pull back and zoom in on the scene
Three panels with a huge explosion above a city with a cactus in the foreground.
and as the panels divide into ever-thinner segments
Fire, explosions and smoke. People with bandages and a skull.
symbolizing the disintegration of things by the bomb
Five vertical comic panels with fire, destruction and silhouettes of people. The last panel depicts a skull.
finally returning us to the more-than-emblematic skull of the opening panel.
The prevalence of nuclear war imagery in recent Western culture is alarming, of course, particularly since so much of it has been fatalistic or belligerent in nature; but I take some comfort in the fact that at least we have allowed ourselves to think about nuclear war. For decades we pretended that it couldn’t happen. Then we seemed to be trying to frighten ourselves into believing that it could. Unfortunately, that seemed to be a necessary first step to eliminating these weapons.

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