One of the most important tasks undertaken by writers and artists is the depiction of the actual effects of the only nuclear war the world has so far experienced: the ending of World War II. Note that the conventional depiction of the premier icon of nuclear war-the mushroom cloud-is almost always at a distance. The familiar shape is awesome, but not immediately threatening. It takes a cartoonist from Hiroshima, Keiji Nakazawa, to take us beneath the shadow of the bomb and see directly what it did to the human beings it struck.   Back   Home   Next