What American Pop artist is known for comic-strip-style paintings like 'Whaam!'?

The American Pop artist known for comic-strip-style paintings like Whaam! is Roy Lichtenstein.

Lichtenstein became internationally recognized in the early 1960s for enlarging the visual language of comic books and commercial printing. His paintings commonly feature thick outlines, flat colors, dramatic captions, and Ben-Day dots, which imitate the mechanical patterns used in mass-produced images.

Whaam! was painted in 1963 as a large diptych. One panel shows a fighter plane firing a rocket; the other shows the target exploding beneath the emphatic sound effect “Whaam!” Lichtenstein adapted the scene from a war-comic image illustrated by Irv Novick, transforming a small printed panel into a monumental gallery work.

The artist is sometimes grouped too broadly with Andy Warhol, another leading American Pop artist, but their signatures differ. Warhol focused heavily on celebrity, consumer brands, and repetition, whereas Lichtenstein became especially associated with comic imagery, romance scenes, and war pictures. Whaam! entered the Tate’s collection in 1966.