Stichting Laka

Publicatie Laka-bibliotheek:
Cartooning and Nuclear Power: From Industry Advertising to Activist Uprising and Beyond (2007)

Auteur	Leonard Rifas
	-
Datum	april 2007
Classificatie	9.20/55 (STRIPS / BEELDVERHALEN)
Voorkant

Cartooning and Nuclear Power: From Industry Advertising to Activist
Uprising and Beyond
by Leonard Rifas, EduComics
April 2007
PS: Political Science and Politics

Nuclear power’s momentum was broken in the late 1970s by several factors, 
including a grassroots anti-nuclear movement that won tightened regulations, 
thus raising the costs of nuclear power plant construction and operation. 
Editorial cartoons in the daily press of that time are only one of a number 
of fields of cartooning that document this nuclear power controversy, and 
not the one that affords the closest look. Both the nuclear industry and 
participants in the anti-nuclear movement published entire comic books to 
explain their views of nuclear power. Besides these special-purpose comic 
books, editorial cartoonists in the weekly press and representations of 
nuclear power in mass entertainment provide further bodies of visual evidence
for understanding the steps by which nuclear power won and lost the “public
acceptance” that it now tries to win back.
In the contest between the comic books for and against nuclear power, the 
pro-nuclear forces had many advantages, including a long head start. In 1948,
 at a time when comic books were a popular mass medium and frequently used 
for promotional purposes, General Electric sponsored Adventures Inside the 
Atom. General Electric was working, then and later, on both military and 
civilian applications of nuclear energy. That year, Popular Science magazine
published a comics-format explanation of nuclear fission titled Dagwood 
Splits the Atom, which was expanded into a complete comic book in 1949. 
Utility companies and comics publishers continued to distribute comic books
extolling nuclear power for the next several decades.

Deze publicatie is digitaal beschikbaar in de Laka-biblitoheek maar de pdf staat niet online.
Mail ons (info@laka.org) als u de pdf toegestuurd wilt krijgen (met onderwerp, volgnummer en titel). U kunt natuurlijk ook langskomen.