How (Not) to Defend a City

Last week I mentioned some old comics, Atomic War and World War III, that featured depictions of nuclear war in an effort to get people to buy defense bonds.

They featured tons of treachery and lots of horrible dying explosion, followed by last-ditch heroism. Naturally.

Some parts of these old comics are rather nifty. Here, for instance, is a weird-looking yet somewhat realistic imaginary Soviet plane.

(I know it's imaginary because jet bombers don't generally have machine gun turrets. Also, that's a big darned plane, though not the biggest I've seen.)

And then we have moments like this one.

Wait for it...

Wait for it...

Um.

Well, I suppose the city was saved from being reduced to rubble, but it's probably not going to be fun to live there...

-Signing off.

A Different Kind of PSA

It's been said that public service announcements aimed at children are required by law to be annoying and lame. I think I know why that is: Some PSAs from the past were just too awesome for kids.

Behold:

Yes, this is a PSA. The publishers want you to know...

...if you don't buy defense bonds, everyone you know and love will die in a horrible atomic war.

What's truly interesting about this is that this is not the only PSA title of this nature; the same publishers also put out another title. The second, Atomic War, was more subtle in tone...

...by a generous definition of "subtle."

No editor's note on this one.

And yes, I really am sure that these are part of an effort to get people to buy bonds; most of the advertisements inside featured this bit:

Aggressive marketing, no?

Incidentally, both titles are pretty similar, though just different enough to tell them apart. I'll probably do a brief writeup of some of their contents sometime; I know I had fun reading them.

(All images come from CBR files of comics in the public domain, obtained at Golden Age Comics. Be warned, downloading them for free might cause World War III.)

-Signing off.