Atomic Comics

Joanne Freeman: The atomic age was a term used to describe a futuristic world filled with possibility, but by the 1960s, the threat of nuclear war was making Americans uneasy about what they’d created. That uneasiness was reflected in comic books, and in 1962, two men named Bruce Banner and Peter Parker were transformed into superheroes by radioactive accidents.

Joanne Freeman: Back Story producer Ramona Martinez takes a deeper look at these heroes, and how their stories reflect America’s relationship with atomic power.

Ramona Martinez: The early 1960s was a time of fear, paranoia, and alien space invaders.

Jim Kakalios: Fin Fang Foom or Gohan, Son of Goom, or Kraka Doom, or [Brutu 00:31:05] or [Grutu 00:31:07], or [Kalutu 00:31:11].

Ramona Martinez: At least, that’s the way it was in comic books.

Jim Kakalios: Every month, the earth was being in danger of being taken over.

Ramona Martinez: This is professor Jim Kakalios, author of the Physics of Superheroes.

Jim Kakalios: And in one issue in particular I’m a big fan of, Tales to Astonish #13, earth was being attacked by Groot from the Planet X. This is the same Groot, by the way, who would later on turn out to be a good guy in the Guardians of the Galaxy, but when he first appeared in the comics, he was actually trying to take over the earth.

Jim Kakalios: In the story, the military tries to stop him, and they can’t do anything about it. And this one scientist, Evans, figures out how to take out Groot, and how to incapacitate him. It involves mutated super termites. It’s not very sophisticated. But the very last panel of this comic book, the sheriff of the town says, “Here’s Evans’ plan.” He says, “Well, I’ll be. I never even thought of that,” and another towns person next to the sheriff says, “That’s why Evans is a scientist and you’re only a sheriff.” And the we see Evans and his wife embrace, and Evans’ wife says, “Oh, darling, forgive me. I’ll never doubt you again. Never.”

Ramona Martinez: This was standard fare for comic books. A bad guy shows up, a scientist comes up with a solution, and the day is saved. And Kakalios says that Americans had tremendous faith in science, given the technological advances of the 20th century.

Jim Kakalios: You could not escape the changes that science and engineering were introducing into everyone’s lives.

Ramona Martinez: And because science informed what happened in comic books, it made sense that atomic power shaped their storylines.

Sean Howe: Of course, science fiction writers and readers would have been very interested in everything that was at the forefront of technology.

Ramona Martinez: Sean Howe is the author of Marvel Comics: The Untold Story.

Sean Howe: The first superhero comic book, Superman, was published in 1938, and that was the same year that nuclear fission was discovered.

Glen Weldon: Atomic power was this really terrifying specter.

Ramona Martinez: This is Glen Weldon, an editor at the NPR Arts desk.

Glen Weldon: But it was also … Think about it. It was about five years into the space race, so technology, including atomic technology, was a means to realize a kind of Utopian future. Atomic power, at this point, is a very powerful, unpredictable, unknowable thing. It’s essentially magic.

Ramona Martinez: That magic allows us to believe in a world where scientists don’t just come up with the solution to earth’s problems the way that that scientist dealt with Groot. The scientists become the solution.

Ramona Martinez: So in 1962, atomic magic transformed two ordinary men into uber men, into something they could never have been before the accident. The Incredible Hulk and Spiderman became superheroes, but they didn’t have a choice.

Glen Weldon: So this is from Incredible Hulk, May 1962. Bruce Banner is a scientist. Don’t worry about what kind of scientist. He’s just scientist.

Sean Howe: Stationed out in the desert.

Glen Weldon: He’s got a white coat. That’s the simple iconography of comics here.

Ramona Martinez: Dr. Bruce Banner and his fellow scientists are about to detonate an experimental gamma bomb. It’s supposed to be a big day for him professionally.

Sean Howe: Everything changes for Bruce Banner when a joyriding teenager named Rick Jones drives into the test site.

Glen Weldon: This punk kid in a Jeep out there in the middle of the field playing a harmonica.

Ramona Martinez: As funny as this may initially seem, this kid is about to blow up, and I’m not talking about his harmonica career.

Sean Howe: Bruce Banner realizes that this bomb is about to go off, this gamma bomb …

Glen Weldon: And he panics …

Sean Howe: And he runs out …

Glen Weldon: And he almost makes it. He does save the kid. He manages to push the kid into a ditch, but he does not have enough time to save himself, and he takes the full blast of gamma radiation.

Sean Howe: This experience that Banner undergoes is, I think, one of the most haunting series of images in comic books at that time. There’s a closeup of his face screaming in agony.

Glen Weldon: And you see it transform him. You see all this light and shadow dance across his face.

Sean Howe: The caption reads, “The world seems to stand still, trembling on the brink of infinity, and his bar splitting scream fills the air.”

Glen Weldon: Then we cut to him in a hospital bed still screaming.

Bruce Banner: (screaming)

Ramona Martinez: Doctors tell him it’s a miracle he survived, and that he absorbed the full impact of the gamma rays. Banner’s head begins to pound, and a nearby Geiger counter, which measures radiation, starts clicking rapidly.

Bruce Banner: (screaming)

Ramona Martinez: In agony, he begins to transform into a monster.

Glen Weldon: The idea here is that this transformation is a painful one. It is one that takes a lot out of him. It’s one that completely upsets who he is.

Ramona Martinez: No longer a handsome scientists, Bruce Banner has turned into the Incredible Hulk.

Glen Weldon: The Hulk is a creature of infantile rage and tremendous destructive power.

Ramona Martinez: But it’s not permanent.

Sean Howe: It’s this cross between Frankenstein and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

Ramona Martinez: Sometimes he looks like himself, other times he looks like a hulking gray monster. Yes, in the original comic, he was gray and not green.

Glen Weldon: When we see Bruce Banner, and he is not the Hulk, he talks of the Hulk as this horrible thing that he never wants to be again. He understands how destructive he is. It’s a tension that plays out, and over the course of many years, different writers, different artists have dealt with him in different ways, but that’s the central tension of this character. This fear of letting go. This fear of toxic masculinity.

Ramona Martinez: Bruce Banner embodies both good and evil, yin and yang, and thus the ambivalence Americans felt about atomic power. And a few months later, Marvel introduced another character whose story hit even closer to home.

Jim Kakalios: This is Amazing Fantasy #15.

Glen Weldon: This is amazing fantasy number 15, August 1962.

Sean Howe: Peter Parker. He’s a high school student.

Glen Weldon: He’s a very nerdy one in a sweater vest and glasses. And he goes up to what he thinks are his friends and asks if they want to go after school to visit the science hall because there’s a very interesting experiment in radioactivity.

Sean Howe: He’s in fact, mocked.

Glen Weldon: They, being kids, of course, make fun of him. Say, “Absolutely not. What are you thinking?” And he goes anyway.

Ramona Martinez: At the science hall, there’s a demonstration on how to control radioactive rays, but then fate intervenes.

Glen Weldon: A spider descends from the ceiling, happens to intersect one of these radiation blasts.

Sean Howe: We see the spider drop between two nodes brilliantly lit.

Ramona Martinez: As it’s dying from irradiation, the spider uses its last bit of strength to take revenge on these science nerds.

Peter Parker: Ow!

Ramona Martinez: And bites Peter Parker.

Sean Howe: His reaction is not quite as violent as say the Hulk’s.

Glen Weldon: Almost immediately, there is a feeling of great energy coursing through his body. He gets dizzy, he goes outside.

Peter Parker: I need some air.

Glen Weldon: And he is so consumed with what’s happened to him, that he doesn’t see a car barreling toward him. But he senses it. And he jumps and lands on a wall and sticks to it.

Peter Parker: It’s incredible!

Glen Weldon: Which is how he learns that this spider has imbued him with the strength of a spider, the ability climb walls, and also extraordinary spidey senses.

Sean Howe: And so now we see that this is going to be a pretty big day.

Ramona Martinez: And even though his body has been arguably upgraded bu atomic power, he still has to deal with every day life.

Glen Weldon: Which is why he’s a good representation of radiation and super heroes that relationship. Because he is a contradiction. He is both the burden of what nuclear power can do, what atomic energy can do, what radioactive blood can do. And also its potential boon, its potential benefits.

Ramona Martinez: The most famous line from Spider Man is, say thing with me, “With great power comes great responsibility.”

Glen Weldon: When you’re a kid and you read Spider Man comics you love the great power stuff, all the exploits, all punching and the fighting, and the daring dude. But what they were aiming for, who they were trying to resonate with of course, were adolescents and adults who were going to read this book. And that’s where the responsibility comes in.

Ramona Martinez: It’s not just that Peter Parker gets more responsibility, his life is upended by his new power.

Sean Howe: His uncle who along with his aunt has raised him, is shot by a burglar that Peter Parker himself could have caught earlier. He continues to suffer at the hands of his classmates. And eventually the great tragedy of Peter Parker’s life is Spider Man is the death of his beloved Gwen Stacy at the hands of the Green Goblin. Something that obviously would not have happened had he not become Spider Man.

Ramona Martinez: Sounds like a pretty mixed bag to me. So what are we supposed to conclude about atomic power from these stories? I reached out to Atomic Culture scholar, Margot Henrickson.

Mary Wammack: Maybe some of these comic super heroes recognize that there are pitfalls to this kind of technology. But largely speaking, they seem to be lionized and they’re heroes.

Ramona Martinez: Since the US was the only nation that had actually used these weapons, Henrickson believes it was difficult for Americans to acknowledge the true dangers of atomic power.

Mary Wammack: I’m not even sure to this day that Americans have come to terms with the horror of these weapons. But maybe the super heroes were an attempt to grapple with that. Maybe an attempt on some levels to bind that power. But I still think that the super heroes who claim their powers because of radiation or anything related to atomic power, none the less, give a short os sheen of somehow respectability or acceptability to these powers, to mutate and deform through atomic power. So I think they’re somewhat problematic.

Ramona Martinez: At the time, atomic power was both a means of saving the human race and a means of annihilation. But in the case of these 2 heroes, atomic power doesn’t save them. It annihilates any trace of a normal life.

Joanne Freeman: Producer Ramona Martinez told that story.