I graduated from high school in 1977, so this Tom Tomorrow cartoon (This Modern World) has special resonance for me:
(Click the image to enlarge for readability.)
I don't know if 1977-me expected this kind of march of progress. More likely, I thought we would be a glowing pile of nuclear rubble. Well, at least 1983-me thought that. But I do sometimes wonder if there isn't an alternate universe that ours is the inverse of, which split off in 1980. (Wow, that's a terrible sentence.)
I got this cartoon a day or so before it published on The Nib because I'm a member of Sparky's List. Tom Tomorrow (aka Dan Perkins) started the list after weekly newspapers started going out of business, depriving him of his main source of income.
With the Sparky's List email, you also get commentary to accompany the cartoon, and in this case some of that included these thoughts:
...the traveler is a bit manic, asking questions without waiting for answers. This was just a structural choice, but I guess it could be because he’s a sexist man of his era, so certain of the answers that he’s not waiting to let the woman get a word in edgewise. But there’s another possible explanation, hinted at by the tiny coke spoon he’s wearing around his neck. Who can really say?
And then in the final panel, the 2022 woman realizes she’s wasted a chance to save humanity, by being snarky. Maybe I spend too much time on Twitter but this seems like the most plausible aspect of the cartoon to me.
You can sign up for Sparky's List here.
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