With Marvel’s Secret
Wars event still raging I’ve been thinking a lot about future timelines
within comic books. The weird
thing about comics is that despite the completely blank canvas the future
provides writers, they tend to produce a lot of similar imaginings for what
tomorrow holds. The general way
things fall is stuff like a post-apocalyptic possibility, a utopian future, and
something in between. As such I decided
I would highlight a bunch of possible futures from DC and Marvel that deserve
more attention.
Marvel 2099 is one of the better-known futures I wanted to
highlight but it still deserves way more love than it gets. 2099 was a Marvel imprint from 1992 set
in the futuristic year of 2099, meant to explore what the Marvel universe would
look like at the end of the next century.
For the most part it was a success with Spider-man 2099 as a major success alongside Doom 2099. The
futuristic world of 2099 was pretty engaging overall, featuring a strange
universe that combine late ‘80s cyberpunk with early ‘90s cool
anti-establishment cultural. It
featured stuff like the villainous Alchemax corporation basically owning the
US, a new major religion revolving around Thor, a new Ghostrider with chainsaw
on a flying motorbike, and Dr. Doom as the savior of human freedom. I actually think 2099 is superior to
the much more well-known and beloved Batman
Beyond universe, which drew from 2099 for inspiration in a lot of
aspects. This is because as much
as I loved Batman Beyond it never
managed to eclipse its TV show in terms of quality and never really developed
its universe and characters beyond Gotham’s boundaries like 2099 did.
GUARDIANS OF THE
GALAXY
Believe it or not the team of space rogues you know from Guardians of the Galaxy the film aren’t
actually the original Guardians of the Galaxy. The original team came from a comic book event in Avengers known as the Korvac Saga. They were a band of genetically
engineered freedom fighters from the future. In the future humanity has been enslaved by an evil
reptilian race known as the Badoon and the Guardians of the Galaxy are our last
saviors. Most of them are
genetically engineered beings designed to work on different planets like
Charlie-27, a man designed to withstand Jupiter’s gravity, or Martinex, a
crystal being designed to channel thermal heat on Pluto. Their universe was bizarre but engaging
with a major emphasis on 20th century stuff kicking around to cause
trouble like a giant horde of evil Iron Man suits brewing in space like a cross
between Skynet and the Borg.
This one is a bit more obscure as it was only featured in a
Grant Morrison JLA comic and an
episode of Batman Brave and the Bold. ‘Knights of Tomorrow’ is a future where
Bruce Wayne and Catwoman settled down and had a son together. Their son is the current Robin, working
alongside Dick Grayson as Bruce & Selena guide them from the Batcave. It’s similar in some aspects to Batman Beyond only with the added bonus
of more actively addressing Bruce’s gallery of rogues and associates. What’s more the main story told in
Knights of Tomorrow is a unique take on the Return
of the Joker that manages to jettison a lot of that films more problematic
aspects. Overall it’s a universe
that needs more exploration especially given the nature of superheroes to run
towards legacies and generations like this one.
The second in my trilogy of Grant Morrison futures and
another one to come from his JLA days
in the late ‘90s, DC One Million was
a distant future in which humanity had colonized all of our solar system. The Justice League still exists only
now its members are made up of representatives from all of the various planets. The DC
One Million universe is incredibly rich and engaging because of how many
tie-ins were involved in the event to say nothing of Morrison’s own obsessive
emphasis on detail. Every little
aspect of heroic reality is continued and enhanced here, like Superman having a
lineage of descendants, a new Batman acting as warden of the prison Pluto, to
the Amazons colonizing Venus. It’s
an incredible series that definitely deserves an ongoing as part of DC’s latest
initiative.
The final Morrison entry, this time coming from his
phenomenal run on Batman, Batman #666 presented us with a darkly
pre-apocalyptic future in which Damian Wayne sold his soul to the devil to be
the best Batman he could be.
Morrison’s vision of a Gotham lost in a world of advanced technology
coupled with environmental collapse and moral decay is a Hell to behold. It’s full of incredibly inventive and
menacing villains while Damian has proven himself one of the best Robins of all
time over the course of Morrison’s work.
I’m honestly kind of surprised this version of Batman hasn’t gotten more
exploration as it ties in well with a lot of current trends that dominant the
character’s stories.
Back to Marvel this time for a more obscure entry, Killraven was a comic from the ‘70s
during much of Marvel’s 2nd expansionary push. These were the days when Marvel was
branching out again into horror comics as well as fantasy books, especially
barbarian fantasy. That’s sort of
where Killraven fits though his genre
is better defined as science fantasy, specifically sword and planet
fiction. Killraven is basically an
unofficial sequel to H.G. Wells War of
the Worlds, set in a world where the tripod Martians have conquered the
Earth. Killraven is the champion
of a human resistance assisted by a few additional aliens. His stories were always a great combo
of scifi ideas with barbarian fantasy aesthetics and even featured the first
interracial kiss in color comics.
Killraven was actually slated to return as part of Secret Wars with his world of ‘New Mars’ being featured prominently
on the Battleworld map but he’s yet to make an actual appearance.
Camelot 3000 was a
limited series from DC comics that came about during DC’s churning cauldron of
bizarre experiments and innovation that was the 1980s. The basic idea is pretty much what’s printed
in the title; in the year 3000 the Knights of the Round Table and their foes
are reincarnated. It’s basically
an excuse to produce Arthurian characters with futuristic scifi technology but
that’s a noble goal if ever I heard one.
The series had a lot of cool and creative elements and walked
hand-in-hand with a lot of other DC weirdness at the time like Alan Moore’s Swampthing, the kind of comic that would
eventually help lead to the rise of DC’s Vertigo imprint.
These guys are actually an old concept from the early ‘60s
when DC was still publishing anthology scifi action adveture comics. The Atomic Knights were a group of
noble warriors operating out of an irradiated future America full of weird
animalistic aberrations. The Knights
used advanced technology and energy incorporated into armor that looked
distinctly archaic and rode around the apocalyptic wastes on horse sized
Dalmatians. The whole concept is
the kind of high concept wackiness approached with stone faced sincerity that
populated so much of DC’s silver age of comics. Despite their relative obscurity in the public eye DC has
returned to the Atomic Knights concept multiple times over the years, most
recently appearing in the various Bludhaven related series in the run up to Final Crisis as well as getting their
own universe in Grant Morrison’s Multiversity.
One of Jack Kirby’s most underrated creations, though that’s
not saying much given Kirby invented the Fantastic Four, Captain America, Thor,
The Hulk, and the New Gods. Kirby
produced OMAC when he came to DC and was asked to write what amounted to
“Captain America but in the future.”
So he came up with the One Man Army Corp, a satellite coordinate
super-being that fought for the faceless men of the global peace agency in a
future full of technological horrors.
So much of OMAC’s future is incredibly iconic that it almost demands to
be readdressed, things like the friend in a box or the idea of being able to
rent a city. Most of all I’d like
to see a return to the classic OMAC design and an emphasis on the world of his
original adventures as Keith Giffen and Dan Didio already did a good job
creating a contemporary analog to them with their OMAC comic.
Even better than OMAC’s
bizarre and terrifying futurism is the world of Joe Simon and Jerry
Grandenetti’s Prez. Prez
is a beautiful diamond of insanity that could only be produced in the unique
era of 1973-1974. The book is rife
with political passion, inspired to righteous anger by the presidential election
of 1972 and informed by the fading ideology of ‘60s flower child liberalism and
‘70s inclusivity. All of this
political rigmarole ends up smothered over in the kind of completely
nonsensical high concept material that comics had been fleeing from since
1968. It’s the kind of insane
world where an 18 year old president is the most sane and logical part of its
mythos, a world where that President fights robotic exploding man-sized chess
pieces or negotiates peace deals with wolfmen. It’s political farce meets acid trip at a rock the vote
rally.
I know what you’re thinking but bare with me: yes, 2001: A Space Odyssey was both a book
and then a film. However, after it
became a film Marvel comics optioned the rights to produce a comic book
adaptation of the film…sort of.
Most of Marvel’s adaptations ended up more like continuations of the
story based on extrapolations from key elements, a fact made even worse because
Jack Kirby was tapped to adapt it.
Kirby is a great writer but his “adaptations” are always incredibly
weird, like how his world of Kamandi
was meant as a soft-core adaptation of Planet
of the Apes. In the case of 2001: A Space Odyssey Kirby did adapt
part of the film, in particular the key idea of an alien sentient obelisk
influencing humanity’s development going forward. It’s an incredibly metaphysical comic with a huge scope,
tracing the obelisk’s influence on humanity as it percolates own through
generations of DNA. The whole idea
of the comic is seeing this unknowable alien intelligence gifting simple
concepts to ancient cavemen and seeing how the dominos fall for those concepts
to shape the world of our future.
Best of all this is still technically in Marvel continuity as the
character of Machine Man, a cult classic character at Marvel, was introduced
through the 2001: A Space Odyssey
comics.
If you like this review feel free to 'like' Lido Shuffle on Facebook here or follow me on Twitter here.
If you like this review feel free to 'like' Lido Shuffle on Facebook here or follow me on Twitter here.
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