I really enjoy the idea behind Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow?, the latest original graphic novel by Brian Fies, author of Mom’s Cancer. The work analyzes and unpacks 1940s and ’50s futurism, which is one of my favorite aspects of kitsch and pop culture. It’s that kind of “gee whiz,” “Buck Rogers” sensibility that informs some of our best modern pop artifacts.

 

Fies obviously shares this sense of wonder. The book is packed with loving descriptions and illustrations, starting with the 1939 New York World’s Fair, the book’s opening setting. The work’s subsequent examination of what people only a generation or so ago imagined our generation’s lives to be like is a really enlightening exercise; the innocence with which they hoped for their unrealized future really instills a sense of modern wonder and nostalgia—even if a reader wasn’t around to enjoy “the world of tomorrow” the first time around. This feeling shines through on every page, starting with the aforementioned World’s Fair, and continuing into the portions dealing with man’s first forays into space exploration and rocket science.

 

In terms of giving a quirky and interesting cultural history lesson, Fies’s book succeeds. However, it’s the framing device with which he delivers this lesson that seems to come up a bit short. The book’s two main characters—only main characters, really—are Pop and Buddy, a father and son who we watch grow and mature through the 20th century, culminating in the mid-1970s. Along the way, we get interludes of Cap Crater and the Cosmic Kid, stand-ins for Pop and Buddy, whose adventures are crafted to pay homage to the various comic book heroes and styles of their respective decades. These were my favorite portions of the book, as the paper-stock changes to replicate old comic book pages, as does the coloring (along with “accidentally-on-purpose” coloring errors).

 

The Cap Crater segments offer a tongue-in-cheek commentary on the changing times and attitudes experienced by Pop and Buddy. The Pop and Buddy sections—the majority of the book, in essence—are themselves allegorical, their relationship standing in for the strained relations that the younger generations began to have with their forebears. But this doesn’t work as well as it could; they, like any good comic book character, age through time very, very slowly, so that Buddy is only just going off to college 36 years after the book begins. This makes whatever minimal plot there is between father and son matter far less than they should, effectively dividing a reader’s attention between the history lessons Buddy’s narrative offers, the plot of Buddy and his father, and the comic book exploits of Cap and the Kid.

 

Fies’s book’s heart is in the right place, and it’s an excellent way to gain knowledge and perspective on an aspect of American history that remains important, despite its being in the past. But it’s unfortunate that the strong characterization and story that defined Mom’s Cancer didn’t resonate through Fies’s work once again here.