Roy Lichtenstein’s 1963 diptych showing a fighter plane firing a missile was Whaam!
The monumental painting is divided into two panels: the left shows a fighter aircraft launching a rocket, while the right shows the target exploding. A smoke trail visually links the panels, turning separate images into a single sequence of attack and consequence. The explosive title appears as large comic-book lettering in the right panel.
Lichtenstein adapted the central image from a 1962 war-comic panel illustrated by Irv Novick, but he radically enlarged and reorganized the source. Its bright primary colors, black outlines, caption box, and simulated Ben-Day dots reproduce the visual grammar of mass-produced comics on the scale of history painting.
Whaam! is a diptych because it consists of two coordinated panels, not because it shows two unrelated scenes. It was first exhibited at Leo Castelli Gallery in New York in 1963 and entered the Tate’s collection in 1966. The work is now one of Tate Modern’s best-known Pop Art paintings.