Free Comic Download - Atomic War! Issue #4 (Ace Comics) (April 1953) For Your Old School Post Apocalyptic Campaigns

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This is Issue Number Four and one of the best out of the series in my humble opinion. This issue starts out with the pre holocaust military action going right into the nuclear deep end with Arctic Assault a combination mission of nuclear bombing and dirt side action. We're given deep background on the Commie/Soviet forces and the Mericans assault on them. The tech level is upped a notch and we're thrust right into a world where the jets are nuclear powered, the missiles are more deadly, and the action deep. Want to know what the action is when a cold war goes to hot in the Arctic? This is the story that's going to give you the background on one of those multi level bases and deep dungeons. Here we're given two for the price of one story. The Merians and Soviet bases are perfect fodder for your old school post apocalyptic games.
 Old Timers Die Hard features artillery pieces, fanatical soldiers and some solid action done in the retro style of Fifties comic books.  We've got tank battles and a perfect set piece to add in for one of those famous battle scenes that seem to paint every Gamma World game done in a perfect alternative Earth style.
Operation Satellite is the sort of story that a DM can sink his teeth into and come up with a perfect adventure to run parallel with the story. Another story with multi level hidden bases, weird Soviet hybrid war heads, and space based nuclear weapons from the Fifties folks. 

Peril at Ploesti features some Soviet sub battles plenty of atomic action and lots of potential for those underwater Shadow Years Mutant Future adventure backgrounds. This is a great story for a short comic book feature. This is one of the strongest issues to come out from Ace comics and it also happens to be the last for this series!

Using Atomic War Issue #4 (Ace Comics)

 For Your Old School Post Apocalyptic Campaigns 

 

There are several things that I love about this Ace Comic issue. The deep backgrounds and details of the stories are great fodder for a retro future Mutant Future game. The ideas here are way, way ahead of the 1953 date that this comic was published but this is tempered with some of the ironic ideas present in this issue.
The forces in this issue are almost hell bent on exterminating themselves and through the action there's some great ideas for background material for your old school adventures. Retro-future games set in this world are going to have some really interesting military hardware to deal with. Even though this issue's technology is from the Korean era there's some nuclear scale weapons that can wreck havoc with the forces in a game of Mutant Future or Gamma World for that matter.
All in all this is one of the best of the Atomic War series and the potential for setting this material for gaming in a post apocalyptic campaign couldn't be higher in my opinion. There's lots of potential here and because they're not that well known there's lots of room to improvise. These stories are not tied to any particular comic continuum giving a DM lots of room to move these stories wherever they need to go in a campaign.
Is this the end on our series of articles for those great Fifties Nuclear War exploitation comics as resources for your old school post apocalyptic campaigns? Certainly not! There were plenty of other one shots, short runs, and more in this particular genre. We've got more coming up!
Remember only a strong America can prevent
Atomic War!