Whatever Happened To The World Of Tomorrow? – Brian Fies
Whatever Happened To The World Of Tomorrow? – Brian Fies (Abrams Comic Arts)
There was a time, not all that long ago, when the future was seen as something beautiful, a time that held the keys to not only our individual freedom, but also offered our entire species freedom, the freedom, to maybe, one day, roam the stars and reach out and touch the unknown. During the mid twentieth century, despite the horrors of war and conflict, there was still a sense of optimism about the future, about the promise it held, and ‘Whatever Happened To The World To Tomorrow?’, starting with the World’s Fair in Queens in 1939, and ending with the final Apollo mission in 1975 ( a joint venture with the Russian Soyuz programme), explores the four decades in which humanity made more technological leaps forward than in any other period in our history. Using a father son relationship, and the way that the inevitable generation gap shapes and moulds perspective and ideas, and a comic within a comic (‘Space Age Adventures’, that mirrors the central characters relationship) sub-plot similar to the way Moore used ‘Tales Of Black Freighter’ in Watchmen, to explore the social, political, economic and technological history of the period, Brian Fies, paints an endearing, beautiful and heart felt picture of a world, that at some point in our lives, we’ve all longed for, a world in which our drive to create and explore outshines and outweighs our base desires, a much simpler time when belief in the future was all that it should have taken to make it happen. ‘Whatever Happened…?’ is an incredible journey, a voyage through the halcyon days of the space programme, a time when it really seemed like we were bound for the heavens, and reminds it’s reader that even though humanity is capable of great destruction, greed and selfishness, we’re also able to set that aside and work together in order to build the elusive future that we were promised less than a century ago and even though we may not have the future that we were promised, at the end of the day, the future is an unwritten chapter and it’s up to us to determine how the story either ends, or carries on indefinitely. A wonderful way to spend an afternoon, and thoroughly recommended to the dreamers and those who still believe that our destiny lies out there… Tim Mass Movement
