Looking Back to the Future: The History of the Future in Comics

In case you don't have a television or a computer or eyes or cognitive function and hadn't heard, today — October 21, 2015, in case you're reading this... in the future — marks the day that Marty McFly visited when he traveled to the future in 1989's Back to the Future 2: 2 Back 2 Future. (The actual day, and not, as your Facebook friends would have you believe, every single other day of the last ten years.) This movie proved an eerily prescient oracle, correctly predicting such everyday occurrences here in the future as flying cars, the trend of wearing two ties, and the ubiquity of the fax machine. Comics as a medium, and especially the superhero genre, has always had at least one foot firmly planted in the sphere of science fiction, and, as such, has frequently used elements of time travel and premonition in order to present visions of the future; frequently harrowing visions meant to show just how important the actions of a title's protagonists are. Continue reading…