Here’s a cheerful in-house ad from the January 18, 1982 issue of Time Magazine:
MUGGINGS! RAPES! MURDERS! Does that scare you, Ms. Whiteperson? It should. The egghead intellectual elites might try to confuse you with their nonsense about historic patterns and trends and how the media overstates the threat of violent crime, but you know better.
It’s a dangerous world, full of vicious predators lurking in the darker places. They wouldn’t think twice about taking your property, virtue, or life in order to satisfy their primitive urges….LIKE THE SERIAL RAPIST HIDING IN YOUR BROOM CLOSET AT THIS VERY MOMENT! LOOK OUT!
Ha, ha. Just kidding. For now. You did pee your pants a little, though, which is why you need to get a five-year paid subscription to our fine publication…because who else (besides the Republican Party) is going to pander to your irrational fears of The Other?
Recommended listening: Bauhaus – In Fear of Fear (from Mask
, 1981)
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Fear of gothiness. Fear of dub-influenced postpunk with a hint of funk. Fear of a singer who wanted to be David Bowie and a guitarist who wanted to be that wannabe David Bowie. Fear being remembered only for “Bela Lugosi’s Dead.”
The nuclear war anxiety of the 1980s hit its peak around 1984-85, a period that not only gave us the cinematic doomsday scenarios of The Day After
, Testament
, and Threads, but also the rabid Cold War saber-rattling of Red Dawn
, Rambo: First Blood, Part II
and Rocky IV
.
It was a time when nuclear war went from feeling like a disturbing possibility to a foregone conclusion, with Cold Warrior Ronald Reagan’s 1984 re-election effectively sealing the fate of the human race. (My brother remembers me telling him after the election that he wouldn’t live to his twelfth birthday. I don’t recall that incident, but I do remember the nightmares and crushing dread I experienced at the time.)
And yet, having reached a fever pitch, the sense of apocalyptic inevitability soon dissipated. Reagan, having ridden the train of jingoism to widespread support for lavish defense spending, eased off his hardline rhetoric while his Soviet counterpart advocated for a less confrontational glasnost approach to foreign policy. The situation on the ground (or in the missile silos) didn’t radically change, but the macho “line in the sand” atmosphere of the previous half-decade — and the collective fears it engendered — drastically abated…
…but not before inspiring this fascinating artifact of the era:
The above cover comes from Superman #408 (June 1985) which hit the spinner racks right at the high water mark of 1980s’ nuclear anxiety.
The sedately-titled “The Day the Earth Died!” (co-written by Paul Kupperberg and Ed Hannigan, with art by Curt Swan and Al Williamson) starts off with the mild-mannered Clark Kent picking up a copy of the Daily Planet at a newstand (“Comp subscriptions? At the Planet? Get out of my office, Kent! WHERE’S OLSEN WITH MY FUCKING COFFEE?”) and contemplating the ominous headline about failed arms control talks.
Unfortunately, the pace of global events have overtaken the ponderous beast of print media, as the latest development(s) in the story happen to be on a downward, computer-guided trajectory at that very moment….
In the flash of a lithium hydride fusion reaction, Metropolis is reduced to a radioactive crater, but the (pre-John Byrne Era revision) Man of Steel survives the cataclysm of heat, radiation, and overpressure with just some minor damage to his civilian clothes.
Cursing himself for being caught unprepared, the shell-shocked hero climbs out of the rubble in hopes of finding someone to rescue. He suspects his efforts might be in vain, but then encounters a ragged, dirty moppet crying in the beta-irradiated ashes.
Sadly, Superman’s hopes of at least pulling off a one-out-of-4-billion save ratio from this latest catastophe goes sour when the child transforms into a hideous specter who points an accusing finger at her would-be benefactor.
Superman? A failure? Surely this cannot be…and, in fact, it isn’t the case. The whole scenario turns out to be a dream or, as some might say, “an imaginary story” (as opposed to the entirely fact-based tales featuring Superman).
It would seem that I was not the only person plagued with apocalyptic nightmares during that era. It makes sense, I suppose, given that Superman is the last survivor* of a world that perished in a nuclear fireball that he would have a certain sensitivity to such things, and, indeed, the Man of Steel wonders if his vast powers and commitment to the greater good obligate him to prevent his adopted planet from commiting nuclear suicide.
In an effort to shake off the cobwebs of existential dread and conflicted emotions, Superman decides to do some early morning patrolling. He starts off small by apprehending a pair of hapless burglars (wearing the matching green stocking cap and Members’ Only jacket ensemble popular among the criminal set that season). When that fails to quell his inner demons, he decided to swing past the sunken city of Atlantis, which he saves from what appears to be a volcanic eruption.
As it turns out, the eruption was neither freak nor threat, but a geothermal experiment overseen by Superman’s mermaid ex-girlfriend Lori Lemaris and her husband, “Rebound” Ronal. In bit of thematic foreshadowing obvious to anyone with a vestigal brainstem, Lori politely chastises Superman for leaping into a situation without considering the implications of his actions.
(Poor Ronal, on the other hand, is forced to watch this sexually-charged exchange from the sidelines, painfully aware that his marriage is based solely on his functioning anthro-piscine anatomy. One of the great things about living underwater is that no one can see your tears.)
Lori’s words of serendipitously applicable advice fail to resolve her ex-lover’s internal turmoil, however, and soon the Man of Steel is standing at the outskirts of a South Dakota missile base and considering his next course of action.
It’s a classical philosophical dilemma — respect for free will pitted against an urgent need for direct intervention — and one pregnant with all manner of narrative and allegorical possibilities. Will Superman take on two superpowers for the sake of humanity’s survival? How far is he willing to take the role of Earth’s protector? Can direct action without a corresponding shift in popular attitude create lasting beneficial change?
Not that readers of this story will find any of these questions addressed, as Superman’s ethical musings are interrupted by a couple of kids from the local reservation beating the crap out of a white trespasser.
Before Supes can intervene, the conflict resolves itself though a shared love of baseball. Sadly, the only available ball lies inside a rattlesnake lair at the center of a teetering mountain of junked cars, but the industrious lads quickly cobble together an ingenious plan to retrieve it. While one kid decends in to the lair, the other two will stand on the pile of wrecks and distract the snakes by throwing rocks at them.
Superman is decidedly unimpressed by the plan, but adopts a wait-and-see approach, figuring that the dangers of tetanus infections, venomous reptiles bites, and being crushed under a ton of scrap metal are things every boy needs to discover on his own. (Note to self: Don’t hire Superman to babysit in the future.)
In a shocking twist that should surprise no one, the boys’ efforts take a turn for the disastrous, with a multiple tragedy prevented only by a last minute rescue by Superman. The boys, neither older nor wiser, claim that their near-death experiences have taught them a valuable lesson.
The children’s astonishing ability to fake contrition when confronted by an authority figure impresses Superman, who take it as evidence that humanity is capable of learning from its mistakes. Ignoring the fact that he did indeed need to step in to save the children from their own stupidity, he decides to adopt a hands-off position vis-a-vis nuclear weapons…one that has the additional benefit of not rocking the status quo and getting a certain comics company flagged for left-leaning editorializing.
Then again, as my brother pointed out, perhaps this spared Earth-1 from a nightmare far worse
than global nuclear war.
When did “super-complacency” get added to the Man of Steel’s roster of powers?
(I know Green Arrow gets a lot of shit — from both ends of the spectrum — for his shallow liberal politics, but at least he’d have tried to rid the world of nuclear weapons. Granted, he would have accidentally started World War III and found a way to cheat on Black Canary in the process, but it’s the thought that counts.)
Recommended listening: The Southern Death Cult – Moya (from The Southern Death Cult
, 1983)
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Gothic ghost dance chants for the Plutonium Age. Despite Mick Mercer’s assertion that the band got better as the name got shorter, I still prefer this collection of dirge-like demos and live cuts to any of frontman Ian Astbury’s later, more successful efforts.
*apart from Supergirl…and Krypto…and Beppo the Super Monkey…and the Phantom Zone villains…and a couple thousand Kandorians. “The Last Son of Krypton” is a honorific title rather than a statement of fact, it would seem.
