Donald Duck’s Atom Bomb
For those that enjoyed yesterday's marvellous, anti-communist comic book epic, I came across another truly bizarre oddity on the (wonderful) Authentic History Centre website. Yes ladies and gents, it's that long-neglected Disney classic Donald Duck's Atom Bomb (Written and drawn by Carl Banks)!1
The story finds our intrepid, anatine friend labouring away at home constructing an atom bomb that ultimately (much to DD's disappointment) goes "Fut!" rather than "Boom!". Undaunted, Donald decides to call in the experts to help discover the reasons for his bomb's failure. But what's this?! One of the scientists turns out to be a foreign spy: the dastardly (and mittel-European) Professor Sleezy! Gott in Himmel!
As expected, Prof. S makes off with the bomb as soon as our hero's back is turned. Due to some injudicious use of a cigar, however, the devious Professor accidentally ignites the bomb, inadvertently proving that, far from being a dud, Donald's invention has one fairly potent quality: It dissolves hair!
As morbid and weird as the entire story is, the denouement really takes the atomic biscuit. Here we see Donald resolving to nevermore involve himself in the "dangerous business" of bomb making. The (non-dastardly) scientist pleads with him: "But think of the Reward!…Money! Money!…Vast Riches!" His pleas, however, fall on deaf, ducky, ears as DD reveals the Ace he has up his sleeve. I'll let the picture tell the story…
As cynical endings go…that's hard to beat! In fact, the whole story is difficult to 'read'. Is it a cautionary tale of science run amuck? A satire on the greed of the "military industrial complex"? A celebration of the 'can-do' pluck of the American entrepreneur?
Answers on a postcard please…
- Drawn by Carl Banks, the Donald Duck Comic Book was, at one point in the 1950s, selling 25 million copies a month worldwide [back]
November 15, 2005
6 responses to Donald Duck’s Atom Bomb
When are they going to get around to building that Hiroshima ride at Disneyworld?
After a long walk to meditate on the truly freakish nature of the comic, I’ve decided it’s a subversive take on the short-termist lunacy of the military industrial complex, competing ideologies in the face of Mutually Assured Destruction and the myopic science behind the A-bomb and nuclear profliferation.
While the scienticians waffle on from a short-termist perspective about explosions big enough to blow up tanks and assorted enemy hardware in an efficient and spectacular way, the comic subverts this view of the bomb by persistently referring to the insidious effect on the civilian population of a nuclear detonation in the medium to long term. The more one thinks about it, the hair loss which is posited in the comic as such an absurdity, becomes a chilling and moving reference to one of the first, ominous symptoms of radiation sickness.
If a further installment were produced, we are forced to think, surely the comically irate bourgeois looking for a Dr. Feelgood quick fix for hair loss would be depicted as sickening, with great lacerations and boils appearing on skin which has already taken on a cancerous and deathly pallor.
Ultimately, the strip satirises bourgeois American complacency about the consequences of opening the Pandora’s box of nuclear proliferation, not only for the undifferentiated morass of commies overseas, but for themselves.
Dr. Copernicus BA
Another full comic here – [Atomic War]
I only wish I could look inside this pamphlet – [LINK]
If Atomic War wasn’t a primary source for Dr. Strangelove, I don’t know what was.
I tend to agree with copernicus. The tone of the comic is so bizzarre that one can’t help but see subversive content.
Take the below panels for example. They’re pretty disturbing and Un-Disney Like (to say the least), reminding me (oddly) of When the Wind Blows.
I have to say that if I’d seen any of these books on shelves during the early 80s, I would have kacked myself spectacularly. Things were scary enough without having comics called Atomic War around.
No wonder Battle et al were so popular with their relatively reassuring portrayal of conventional warfare. Even the total war of WW2 seemed reasonable and safe when compared with the nightmare of nuclear annihilation, with room for personal heroics and a certain reliance on “the sporting chance”.
While the above might well be said to be illusory, especially when one considers the fate in the period of civilians, especially the victims of nazism, and civic society, by the 1980s not even a child could be induced to believe such fairytales of nuclear armageddon.