Take, for example, this tale from the reprint. A blob from Venus is loose on the Earth, devouring everything in its path. The President calls on his Top Men for a solution to this problem. Enter a guy who looks a bit like Leslie Groves without his mustache:
What I love about this guy is his casual attitude towards unleashing nuclear hellfire on American soil. There he is sitting with his knees crossed, smirking behind his corncob pipe. All of a sudden he has this hum-dinger of an idea. "Gosh gee-whiz, boss! We've got all these gol-durned A-bombs sitting around gathering dust. Maybe we could fire one off and see what happens?"
I know his cavalier attitude towards launching atomics can be partially blamed on this comic's origin in the fifties. In any later era he'd be standing up, hunched over the sitting President, his clenched fists slamming the desk. "With all due respect, Sir, nuclear weapons are our only option." Instead, this guy's almost jolly about it.
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To be fair, there was a contingency plan that if Panama became Commie, we would blast a new canal with a string of atomics.
ReplyDeleteThere is definitely an element of satire there as well. The creators of EC comics were very politically aware and there is tons of social commentary in their comics, much of it subtly anti-establishment. Remember, these guys went on to do Mad Magazine. I strongly recommend all of the EC comics. Great stuff.
ReplyDeleteIf a problem can't be solved with A-bombs, it's probably not worth solving. They're like fireball that way.
ReplyDeleteI'm sad I've never gotten the chance to deploy nuclear weaponry with a character.