Post-war and The Atomic Era
As with World War II, the ushering in of the era following the dropping of the atomic bomb in 1945 colored the content and subject matter of comic books in the mid-to-late 1940s. One blunt example is the educational comic book Dagwood Splits the Atom, using characters from the comic strip Blondie. Superheroes with nuclear-derived powers began to emerge, such as the Atomic Thunderbolt and Atoman. In the movie serial Atom Man vs. Superman, the titular hero fought a villain named Atom Man, while Superman's weakness to kryptonite recalled the dangers of atomic radiation. Contrasting these serious characters were atomic funny animal characters such as Atomic Mouse and Atomic Rabbit. One historian argues that these cute creations helped ease young readers' fears over the prospect of nuclear war and neutralize anxieties over the questions posed by atomic power. The heroes began to fight communists, and some got involved in the Korean War.
Read more about this topic: Golden Age Of Comic Books
Famous quotes containing the words post-war, atomic and/or era:
“Much of what Mr. Wallace calls his global thinking is, no matter how you slice it, still “globaloney.” Mr. Wallace’s warp of sense and his woof of nonsense is very tricky cloth out of which to cut the pattern of a post-war world.”
—Clare Boothe Luce (1903–1987)
“The atomic bomb certainly is the most powerful of all weapons, but it is conclusively powerful and effective only in the hands of the nation which controls the sky.”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)
“It is not the literal past that rules us, save, possibly, in a biological sense. It is images of the past.... Each new historical era mirrors itself in the picture and active mythology of its past or of a past borrowed from other cultures. It tests its sense of identity, of regress or new achievement against that past.”
—George Steiner (b. 1929)