Atom-Age Combat

Cover ot Atom-Age Combat 3 (Fago, March 1959). Threats posed by nuclear weapons and the arms race with the Soviet Union emerged as common themes in comic books in the 1950s. 

Greg S. McCue, with Clive Bloom, Dark Knights The New Comics in Context (Boulder, CO Pluto Press, 1993). Atom-Age Contbat (February 1958) (St. John Publications). Atom-Age Combat 1 (March 1959) (Fago). 

Threats of aggression can come in all shapes and sizes, so defenses have to be versatile. The largest-scale threat is war between nations. Rulers of nations always seem to be wanting the resources of neighboring countries, so threatened countries have to defend themselves or suffer unpleasant consequences. In modern times, countries can have very sophisticated means of defense indeed. The United States has stockpiled atomic bombs if some other country shakes its proverbial fist at us, we can rattle our bombs at them. If threats escalate to violence and we don t wish to use atomic bombs for one reason or another, then other machines can be deployed jets that drop smart bombs, AWACS planes that monitor the air space for many miles, tanks equipped for night combat, surface-to-air-missiles that shoot down surface-to-surface missiles, and much more. To the techno-war-monger, we live in a golden age. 

---