The future is backward
October 31st, 2016
As Tom Jones might have said, go big or go home. As a follow-up to his first graphic novel Toshiko set during World War II, Michael Kluckner has hit the fast forward button and created 2050: A Post-Apocalyptic Murder Mystery (Midtown Press / Sandhill $19.95). Evoking a futuristic West Coast in the wake of a Patriotic War and a pandemic, Kluckner’s dystopian wasteland features Detective Sara Fidelia on the trail of a murderer in a ruined landscape. Sort like Walking Dead Lite meets Raymond Chandler meets cautionary environmentalism. You can’t say it ain’t original. The genesis, according to Kluckner, was a trip to Cuba in 2012 mixed with the onslaught of news stories about humans wrecking the planet. Impressed by Cuban propaganda, Kluckner created a charismatic Great Helmsman along the lines of Castro or Mao, only his dictator is a Sensei, whose strict environmental laws, including population control, dominate the planet in the wake of global chaos, circa, 2028–30. “Visually,” he writes on his blog, “the setting looks like Vancouver, but the only text reference is in a couple of signs; I couldn’t resist adding the ‘nuclear weapons free zone’ sign to one drawing.” It’s not Blade Runner. The future is backward. Like Cuba where ox carts still make a lot of sense. 9781988242187
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