When sci-fi artists were more creative

The Camden New Journal covered an exhibition at a London museum:

THEY are words an artist must just love to hear – there are no budget limitations and you create whatever you want, and on whatever scale you want. The only shackles are your imagination.

This isn’t a fantasy pitch from a collector or commissioner – just what comic book artists writing sci-fiction could enjoy as they sat at their drawing boards and worked out story lines.

And an exhibition at the Cartoon Museum, in Well Street, Fitzrovia, illustrates how the creators of seminal sci-fi had carte blanche to let their imaginations run riot – no matter how big the idea.

Museum curator Hannah Whyte has played a key role putting together The Future Was Then.

“With comics, you are drawing on a page and your budget is essentially limitless – unlike TV and film, where the costs of creating a massive spaceship might be prohibitive,” she says.

“If you can draw it, you can make it happen.”

Sure, but when you consider what cancel culture of the past decade led to, that's why, unless improvements are to be found now, what good will this do from a modern perspective? Again, as I've noted before, the past won't provide lessons unless we recognize they apply to the present/future as well. Yet in the past decade, there were only so many Orwellian mindsets in the press who wouldn't acknowledge how censorship in creativity made a comeback, tragically enough, and when it affects our favorite creations that now have the misfortune of being corporate-owned, that's really sad.

So again, when is anybody going to admit the past decade underwent a terrible situation that could've been prevented if they wanted? For now, all they care about is sweeping that problem under the rug. We have to hope that now, the situation will improve, and 3 years ago, Queen Camilla did make a case why authors shouldn't be impeded by modern PC. The same goes for comics artists and writers. So let's hope they follow her advice, and be as creative as those of the 1950s were.