Atom-Age Combat #1

A limited atomic war threatens to escalate when a U.S. commander suspects the enemy is secretly building a strike-base hidden behind their own lines—and he'll stop at nothing to find it, deploying reconnaissance drones, patrols, and a daring solo officer to pinpoint the target before it's too late. Written and illustrated by the Atom-Age Combat team, "On Target" captures the Cold War tension of 1958 with cutting-edge (for the era) military hardware and the high-stakes cat-and-mouse game of atomic-age warfare.

When Lt. General Joseph Hatton—the fiercely old-fashioned Marine who scorns atomic warfare in favor of human grit—is given command of a stalemated front, he immediately volunteers for a dangerous reconnaissance mission to locate the enemy's mysterious weapons emplacement. His swift capture by enemy forces seems like a catastrophic blunder, but Hatton had orchestrated the entire thing as part of a Pentagon strategy that hinges on the enemy's overconfidence and a carefully hidden piece of atomic technology. In "Old Leatherneck," writer and artist unknown turn a grizzled Marine's principles upside down to deliver a clever Cold War gambit.

A soldier behind enemy lines questions whether modern warfare lives up to its atomic-age hype when his squad's rescue mission for a captured guerrilla leader becomes a brutal, old-fashioned slog through mud and gunfire in "Who Says?" from Atom-Age Combat #1. With no pushbuttons, robots, or automated systems to save him, Sgt. Jablonski discovers that despite all the technological promise of the era, survival still comes down to guts, timing, and luck—until a last-minute rescue proves that maybe atomic-age warfare has one trick left up its sleeve.

Meet Sage, a sprawling electronic defense system that processes thousands of daily flight reports across military bases to identify and intercept enemy bombers—a technological marvel of the atomic age whose artificial mind is tested when an unidentified aircraft suddenly appears on the radar. As Sage guides interceptors into action for what may be the real thing, the calculating machine grapples with uncertainty for the first time, realizing that even the most ingenious invention depends on the human judgment and courage behind it.

The Convair F-102A stands as America's cutting-edge answer to modern air defense, a delta-winged jet fighter capable of supersonic speeds and rapid climbs to intercept threats at extreme altitudes. Equipped with rockets, Falcon missiles, and atomic armament, this all-weather interceptor represents just one vital piece of the nation's atomic-age defensive arsenal.