Cover art by Jack Kirby, Dick Ayers, Stan Goldberg, and Artie Simek
“Communism is the mightiest force on Earth and it will destroy Thor!” a frustrated Chairman Mao Zedong of China shouts after having again been thwarted by the Thunder God. “You are our greatest military strategists, our most ingenious scientists. Speak up! How do we get rid of Thor?” One of the scientists present, Chen Lu, promises that everyone will work day and night until a solution is found. Mao accepts the answer but threatens to have Chen executed if he is unable to kill Thor as promised. The scientist is not worried, however, as he’s already working on a project that he believes holds the key to success.
“Everybody knows atomic power can be limitlessly destructive,” he says to himself. “But radioactivity, enough of it, is potentially a greater menace and I have discovered through my radioactive experiments how to make a human being super-powerful by subjecting him to sufficient radioactivity to change his entire atomic structure.”
Using himself as a guinea pig, Chen Lu activates the device he has constructed and transforms into Radio-Active Man. He then destroys the lab with his newfound powers so that no one will be able to duplicate his experiments and presents himself to Chairman Mao as the perfect foil for Thor. Mao agrees and sends a submarine containing Chen Lu to the Atlantic Ocean. Once it arrives a few miles off the American coast, Chen is placed inside an empty torpedo tube and fired towards New York City.
After swimming ashore, Radio-Active Man is confronted by the local police, who he blinds with an immense light radiating from his body that likewise melts the bullets fired at him. The villain then makes his way to Times Square, where he issues a challenge for Thor to meet him in combat.
The Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union – with China likewise becoming a threat after the Communist forces of Mao Zedong defeated the pro-U.S. Chiang Kai-shek – had a chilling effect on the American populace, a reality that often found its way into the Marvel Comics of the 1960s. Thor’s battle against Radio-Active Man in Journey into Mystery #93, published in June 1963, not only showcased the inherent dangers of a Cold War in which both sides had nuclear weapons, but how the threat of nuclear holocaust weighed heavily on the minds of everyday Americans as well.
The August 5, 1950, edition of Collier’s magazine featured the familiar Manhattan skyline on its cover, only in this particular image a giant nuclear cloud towered overhead as large tidal waves prepared to smash into the city. Additional illustrations by Chesley Bonestell and Birney Lettick that showed the devastation caused by an atomic bomb accompanied the “Hiroshima, U.S.A.: Can Anything be Done About It?” narrative inside, which told the “factual” story of a nuclear attack on the largest city in the United States.
“For five years now the world has lived with the dreadful knowledge that atomic warfare is possible,” the magazine declared. “Since last September, when the President announced publicly that the Russians too had produced an atomic explosion, this nation has lived face to face with the terrifying realization that an attack with atomic weapons could be made against us.”
Collier’s then added, “The opening account of an A-bombing of Manhattan Island may seem highly imaginative. Actually, little of it is invention. Incidents are related in circumstances identical or extremely close to those which really happened in World War II,” a reference to the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan, where thirty-nine percent of the population in the former and thirty-two percent of the latter died in the aftermath.
The resulting devastation across Manhattan was immense. “In an area roughly 15 blocks long and 20 blocks across – from Canal Street north to Tenth and from Avenue B to Sullivan Street – where 100,000 people had lived – there was now an ugly brown-red scar,” Collier’s reported. “A monstrous scab defiling the earth.” City Hall was in rubbles, as was Wall Street. The Empire State Building still stood, but all its windows had shattered from the explosion. Greenwich Village, meanwhile, had been annihilated.
The bridges from Manhattan to Queens and the Bronx remained intact, and thousands scrambled over them to safety. Many were commuters who simply worked in Manhattan, but most were now refugees without a home. “Those who were closest to the point of explosion were roasted to death, instantaneously, where they sat,” the magazine noted. “Only those who happened to be shaded by intervening buildings or trees, as was the case in Gramercy Park, escaped.”
It was a short reprieve, however, as those initially lucky soon developed symptoms of radiation poisoning during the days and weeks that followed. The number of deaths was estimated at 180,000 but “the figure went up slightly every day because people who had counted themselves as fortunate survivors were succumbing to their exposure to gamma radiation during that instant of flash.”
Writer John Lear explained at the end of the article that he had described a “best-case” scenario, based on one atomic bomb from 1945 being unleashed in Manhattan. In reality, if the Soviet Union ever did launch a nuclear attack against the United States, it would drop multiple bombs of the 1950 variety on New York City. The explosions, destruction, death, and aftermath would be far greater.
In the minds of many, such a possibility was inevitable. Lear noted that public opinion polls at the time showed that seven out of ten Americans expected to be victims of an atomic bomb during their lifetime. The entire world was engulfed in a Cold War in which both the United States and the Soviet Union had the power to unleash Armageddon – it wasn’t a matter of if, most believed, but a matter of when.
Within the world of Marvel Comics, there were superheroes like Thor who protected America against any foe, whether they be supervillains or communists. In Journey into Mystery #93, the Thunder God accepts the challenge from Radio-Active Man but discovers that the task is greater than he realized once he arrives in Times Square. The radiation generated by Radio-Active Man is able to deflect Thor’s mystical hammer Mjolnir, while a physical assault could potentially cause the supervillain to reach critical mass and explode like an atomic bomb, destroying New York City in the process.
With Thor helpless, Chen Lu uses his powers to induce a hypnotic state and commands him to toss his hammer. Thor not only complies but tosses it with such force that it flies far off into the distance, forcing Radio-Active Man to search for the weapon.
When Thor is separated from his hammer for longer than sixty second, he changes back into his human form of Donald Blake, and the subsequent transformation releases him from his hypnotic trance. Blake is then able to track down Mjolnir at the bottom of the Hudson River, where he retrieves it from a watery grave and once again becomes the Mighty Thor.
By now the superhero has had enough time to devise a plan to defeat Radio-Active Man. Using his hammer, Thor creates a mini tornado that engulfs the supervillain and sends him back to China, where he immediately explodes into a mushroom cloud. New York City is safe, while the Chinese have learned not to mess with the Thunder God known as Thor.
Anthony Letizia