"From there, the display moves through decades of speculative comics, featuring both well-known and obscure icons, including Dan Dare, V for Vendetta, Thunderbirds, and Flash Gordon. A looping clip from the 1950s Flash Gordon TV series brings the nostalgia to life - complete with the endearingly unrealistic "put-put-put" soundtrack that once defined the sound of space travel in rocket ships."
"Some artistic trends also stand out. Flying cars, for example, are often open-topped, making me wonder if that's a nod to the Californian sunshine where many artists lived, or an assumption that climate change would abolish rain. And in every decade, the "language of the future" sounds suspiciously like the language of the present - perhaps more polished than many of us manage today. Imagine a Star Trek spin-off where characters speak a futuristic dialect so advanced it needs subtitles for 21st-century audiences."
A Cartoon Museum exhibition traces speculative cartoon visions of the future from 1890s postcards to contemporary comics. Early images include a whale-shaped bus and idealized year-2000 scenes. The display features icons such as Dan Dare, V for Vendetta, Thunderbirds, and Flash Gordon, with a looping 1950s Flash Gordon clip and its nostalgic "put-put-put" rocket soundtrack. Labels question whether imagined futures materialized, noting many predictions failed while communication technologies were often correctly foreseen. Recurring motifs include open-topped flying cars and a future vernacular resembling contemporary speech. Modern comics increasingly portray darker futures of fractured societies and environmental collapse.
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