Who's Who in the CBU 2008

Name: Regie Rigby

Regie is a strange, almost ethereal creature. Who can plumb the hidden mysteries of his dark and murky past - a past which contains a terrible secret. A secret that taught him that with great power comes great responsibility, that criminals are a cowardly superstitious lot and just who exactly knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men.

By day, he assumes the appearance of a mild mannered teacher, bringing the joy of literature and the English Language to classes of enthralled and enthusiastic students. But by night?

By night he goes home and writes lesson plans. Sorry. That's as interesting as he gets. Really.

The rumours about rooftop struggles with underworld uberfiends, the gossip about the hidden cave filled with hi-tec equipment and the suggestion that his car might be fitted with turbo lasers are all nonsense.

When he's not teaching he reads comics. Sometimes he combines the two activities. When he's not doing that he's either playing computer games or asleep.

The Futures Market

By Regie Rigby

‘Allo folks! Sorry, after promising to get back on schedule, I’m late again. I have a new computer, but for some reason it doesn’t want to connect to the internet which is making posting the column just a little tricky. Couple that with the fact that although I have lots of things I want to talk about, I can’t talk about any of them yet, and you see my problem. Should all be sorted by next week, which is a good job, because things are beginning to happen!

For a start, Bristol is now approaching at a frankly alarming rate. As I type there are a mere two weekends before the big event and the excitement is mounting here at FoolCentral. Frankly, we have a lot to be excited about. I know I say this every year, and you’re probably sick of hearing this little riff, but I tells ya – this year Bristol promises to be bigger and better than ever!

My old mate Budgie Barnett (the man who has done for accountancy what Indiana Jones did for archeology) will be there again with the Hypotheticals panel, which for so long has been the perennial highlight of my weekend. Hosted by Dave “The Originals” Gibbons (apparently he also worked on something called Watchmen, you might have read it…) and featuring an all star panel of comics pro’s, Hypotheticals is the ultimate manifestation of comics “what if?”. For half an hour or so the panel is transported to “Earth Dave”, where they face a series of dilemmas that are usually slightly connected to comics industry issues here on Earth Prime.

Worth the price of admission, even if nothing else was happening.

But of course, there is a lot more happening.

Bryan Talbot will be there, spending some time discussing his latest masterpiece Alice in Sunderland with former SBC Columnist Rich Johnson. I’ve seen Talbot talk about his work before, and it’s always an enlightening experience. Major publishers from both sides of the pond will be in attendance (although no Marvel again, so far as I can see, which is a shame) and best of all, the bar will be open!

Because whatever events are planned for the weekend, all the best stuff happens in the bar. Whether you meet up with people you’ve known for years, or just get talking to somebody who turns out to be Rodney Ramos (as happened to me a couple of years ago) Bristol always ends up being about the people. I’ve got a list of folk as long as my arm I’m simply dying to meet up with again.

Then, of course there’s the possibility that after several years of threatening to do it, I might actually have the beginnings of a comic to show people myself. I know I’m going on about this rather a lot, but it’s so damn exciting, I can’t help myself. More about the Sunset project next week. Or possibly the week after…

As you can see, I’m rather “future focused” at the moment. That, and something Warren Ellis posted on his Live Journal feed a few days ago have set me to thinking about the future we were promised by the comics we read as kids. Because, the more I think about it, the more I think the great John Lydon was on the right lines when he once asked an audience “Ever feel you’ve been cheated?” Because I don’t know about you, but I think we have been.

Like most British comics geeks my age, I grew up around the perennial Sci-Fi Weekly 2000AD. I was never bought it as a kid (long standing readers will know why, if you don’t, it’s not an interesting enough story to bother you with again) but I had friends who read it, and in my pre-teen years I really did expect its prophesies to come true. I expected flying cars and jet packs. I expected affordable, commonplace space travel. I expected ray guns, aliens, mile high towers, and anti-gravity. I wanted robo-servants and bionic legs.

I wanted it all.

And then the millennium sort of crept up on us and here we are, in the Twenty First Century. Our cars still crawl along the ground. Space travel is still expensive, unreliable and rare. Even the tallest buildings would be dwarfed by anything from Mega-City One and – worst of all - there are still no jetpacks! We’re living in a world where nothing truly spectacular and futuristic has happened since a man last walked on the moon.

That was in 1972.

Thirty five years ago.

And so, I have to ask, when did reality stop keeping up with our dreams?

As the Nineteenth Century became the twentieth, the likes of H.G. Welles were imagining ballistic moon missions and other space missions. By the middle of the Twentieth Century such things were reality. By 1969 men has walked on the Moon. There were satellites orbiting the planet that could beam an image across an ocean. The future was looking awesome.

Then, somewhere in the early seventies, we just stopped.

We haven’t had a human set foot on any ground that wasn’t Earth since 1972. We haven’t had a human go further than a couple of hundred miles from the surface of the planet since then. The much lauded Space Shuttle, conceived in the sixties, buggered about with in the seventies and launched in the eighties has dome nothing but pootle about in low Earth orbit. We send robots to other planets, but we seem to lose most of them. (Although NASA’s Spirit and Opportunity Rovers are doing heroic work on Mars, so it’s not all bad…)

“What has all this to do with comics?” I hear you cry.

Well, it turns out it ain’t just me that worries about this stuff. Southend’s best loved genius Warren Ellis wonders about it too. Doktor Sleepless looks as though it might well be his answer. Ellis himself has summed up the approach of the book with a statement and a question:

“Someone stole your future. Don't you ever wonder who?”

It’s a good question. And it’s a question that comics has never bothered to even try to answer, so far as I know. Our comics are filled with futuristic gadgets that could exist, but don’t. We just read about them, and say “Cool – shame it isn’t real” and move on. We just accept that it’s fiction and move on. We do this so much that we even begin to doubt our real achievements. There are people who believe that we never even landed on the moon for goodness sake!

It’s time we started demanding the future we were promised. Not because we want flying cars and jetpacks (although I wouldn’t say no…) but because we’ve allowed our imaginations run too far ahead of our reality. Ultimately that will limit our imaginations too, and I don’t want my dreams to be stifled.

In the meantime, Doktor Sleepless is already on my order list.

Put it on yours too. Let’s rediscover the future together.