Whaam!

Whaam! Is a painting by Roy Lichtenstein that is derived from comic book art, specifically, it is adapted from a 1962 issue of DC Comic’s All American Men of War by Russ Heath. a postmodern theory is to figure out the relationship between text and image. This painting has more than one text element. The two texts also are rhetorical devices. The first text element is a metaphor. It reads, “ I pressed the fire control… And ahead of me rockets blazed through the sky.” We can try to translate what that means but for now let’s proceed on the next element. The second is the word Whaam! Which is a rhetorical device called onomatopoeia because the word is a description of a sound. The relationship between the image and the text is self referential and auto representative.