In the early 1960s, Lichtenstein began the series of paintings for which he remains best known: large-scale appropriations of distressed young women and daring young men featured in war and romance comics. Of course, love and battle are enduring art-historical subjects. Lichtenstein was particularly fascinated by the contrast between the emotional intensity of the stories found in comics and the highly formulaic style used to illustrate them. He hoped to heighten this dichotomy in his own paintings, explaining, "I was interested in using highly charged material, like Men at War and Love comics, in a very removed, technical, almost engineering drawing style."
Like many of Lichtenstein's works, the title of the painting comes from the speech balloon in the painting. The work was included in Lichtenstein's second solo exhibition. The source of the image is a comic book from DC Comics. Lichtenstein has made significant alterations to the original image to change the focus and perspective in addition to significant alteration of the narrative element of the work. The work plays on the background-foreground relationship and the theme of vision that appears in many of Lichtenstein's works.
When it was last sold in 1989, The New York Times described the work as "a comic-strip image of sea warfare". It formerly held the record for the highest auction price for a Lichtenstein work. Its 1989 sale helped finance the construction of the current home of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago in 1991.