#09 Atomic Power
#09 Atomic Power
Published August 1978 / 28 pages / Last Gasp
Slow Death #9 is the “Special Issue!” about atomic power, which is essentially nuclear weapons and power plants. This topic was explored in Leonard Rifas’ All-Atomic Comics a couple years earlier (though that comic was more focused on the power plants than the weapons) and sold about 50,000 copies, so little wonder Ron Turner was intrigued by the subject, but not enough to present a balanced view of the subject, but hey, it’s just a comic book, right? The pity is a lot of low-information individuals take crap like this as gospel.
Like the previous issue, Slow Death #9 begins with a story by Greg Irons called “Our Friend Mr. Atom,” which weaves a tale of post-nuclear disaster around factoids that convey the disturbing history and destructive power of the atomic bomb. Though “Mr. Atom” is illustrated with less jaw-dropping inkwork than “The Honour & Glory of Whaling” from the previous issue, it’s also well researched by the author (he apparently had an Encyclopedia handy to copy/paste from) but the prose-heavy writing will have most readers skimming to the good stuff.
Four shorter, multi-page stories follow, including solid tales from Dennis Ellefson, Errol McCarthy and Tim Boxell. Boxell’s “The Common Good” reprises the same two characters from “Perfect Evening” in the previous issue, to good effect. Slow Death #9 is only 28 pages instead of the usual 36, but it’s another solid issue and a great companion piece to All-Atomic Comics. The most egregious sin regarding the leftist smearing and demonization of nuclear power is that it’s much cleaner and efficient than fossil-fuels, and if they were serious about pollution and their global warming debacle they would embrace nuclear power as the miracle power source it is, but then, we all know they aren’t really serious at all, jetting about from their mansions to huge luxury hotel conferences to lecture the rest of us to turn down our thermostats and deprive third world countries of a means to alleviate poverty and starvation. Cheap, dependable power is actually the left’s biggest nightmare, because it would cause the kind of free enterprise and capitalist economic boom for the rest of us elitists abhore.
COMIC CREATORS Ron Turner • Greg Irons • M. Irons • Tim Boxell
