“Super-Powers and the Super Powers”: Representation of Nuclear Military Technology through Comic Books

Abstract

During World War II, the United States demonstrated its military might to the rest of the world when it dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. As writer Frank Conroy described, the generation of the new atomic age “felt exhilaration at the indisputable proof that America was the strongest power on earth” (quoted in Henriksen 39). At the time of the attacks, the innovative nuclear technology was celebrated; Americans perceived the atomic bomb as an efficient military weapon that spared countless lives when the enemy surrendered and the Allies emerged from war as victorious. However, shortly after, when the vast destruction of the bomb was revealed, questions of the ethicality regarding the use of nonconventional weapons arose. As the United States entered the Cold War against the Soviet Union, the celebration of World War II victories started to fade and was replaced by the anxieties of a possible nuclear apocalypse.