#2020 visions

[bae0wolf]

shapes

[mg549]

2020 visions by bowman bops tf off

[peachy-keen-glam-queen]

guess i'm back on this godforsaken app after my hiatus of unknown length

[i-r-readcomics]

2020 Visions

Volume: 1 #7

Renegade, Part One

Writers: Jamie Delano

Pencils: James Romberger

Inks: James Romberger

Colours: James Sinclair, Digital Chameleon

Covers: Stephen John Phillips

Featuring: Ethan Joseph McWhirter, Johnson "J.J." Johnson, Mister Taggart 

Vertigo

[devastationwagon]

Hey, thank you, @oldcraigfinn, for the reminder to enjoy the first outside pee of the year.

The streets are empty in that gap between the people that left at ten minutes past midnight and the people that hung around almost until one.

[thecomicsnexus]

2020 VISIONS #10-12 FEBRUARY - APRIL 1998 BY JAMIE DELANO, STEVE PUGH, JAMES SINCLAIR AND DIGITAL CHAMELEON

SYNOPSIS

Adam is the twin brother of Ethan from the previous story, and son of Jack from the second story and grandson of Alex from the first story.

One day, Adam is kidnapped by an organization known as M.A.M.B.O. (Militant Action for Maternity rights, Breeding security and Obstetric care) as a way to protest (and basically, rape Adam into making babies for them). But Adam straight away doesn’t want to have sex (and technically, wouldn’t even be able to have babies). Nurtura Corp, the company that owned him, decided to count him as gone and bomb the building. Only Zonia and him are able to escape.

In their escape from Los Angeles, they end up in Vegas, where they meet a bartender (who happens to be pregnant and used to be part of M.A.M.B.O.) named Claudine. She helps them giving them refuge.

Zonia and Adam starts some kind of platonic relationship. Adam being ultra-religious, cannot really provide what she wants, but he does care for her and wants to make her happy. So he shaves his head and gets a job as a lap-dancer at a local club. But his former assistant, Clyde finds him and tells him that the fertility engineers made sure he couldn’t reproduce anymore (he would, eventually, be able to have sex). But if he was interested in getting some of his frozen sperm for Zonia, he could “snuff-fight” for it, and get the twenty grands he needs to buy it from a smuggler.

The night he goes to fight, Zonia feels bad for all the things he is doing for her, but at the same time, she finds out that Claudine is about to give birth and she sold the baby to some smugglers. Due to complications, she is dying and before they make her unconscious, she makes Zonia promise her she will take care of the baby.

Once the baby is born, Zonia tries to escape with it. Adam comes out triumphant from the fight and helps stop the smugglers. He offers the money he earned to buy the baby, and they finally accept. Now Zonia has her baby, who reminds Adam of his lost brother (because of the droopy eye).

REVIEW

The last story of this series is way easier to read than the others. The previous story was supposed to be the western and this one the romance. I disagree. The previous one felt more like a romance and this one like a road-trip story... ish (a road trip story demands reaching a destination in the third act).

Again, the idea of Eugenics and the government deciding who could procreate wasn’t an accurate prediction of the future, but it doesn’t matter, because this could eventually happen in a society (and technically, almost happened many times, and probably already happened centuries ago). One of the ironies in the story is that native-Americans are actually reproducing faster, and they estimate that in the next fifty years, the land would be theirs again.

There is a lot of role-reversals in this story as well. With Adam often being manipulated, and almost raped (the only reason he wasn’t raped was because he couldn’t get it up, but they tried). Even the person he loved tried many times to use him. I cannot help but feel like this is how women were treated for centuries. Like these pretty things that give you babies. Which at the same time, doesn’t mean Adam’s role in this story is right. But the way women treat him, reminds me of that role reversal.

2020 visions is about a fucked-up country. Each city has its own rules and its own problems. And sometimes I would say, the lives of these characters could change dramatically by just moving to another city.

Adam, just like Ethan, had something missing in his life. And he relied on strong women, as a substitute for his mother and his brother. But because of the way he was raised, he didn’t do desperate things like Ethan to get what he needed. He is just a good big boy.

Another interesting point about 2020 Visions is that everything is a little gender and sexual fluid. It’s not exactly out present yet, and while there is homophobia in the third story, culture in the cities is a bit different, and I think humankind could reach that openness in a generation. But it has more meaning in real life, because in this story, everything is fluid because society changed, sometimes for the worse, and that completely shifted roles, not to genders, but to social status.

So this story of horrible people, in the end, is a story about very real characters that were shaped by the trauma in their lives. Like us, but (hopefully) more fucked up.

Steve Pugh and Frank Quitely are my favorite artists in this book, mostly because their styles were spot-on for the stories that were being told.

I give 2020 Visions a score of 10.

[averyenglishnerd]

2020 Visions

Vol 1 1-6

1997

Writers: Jamie Delano

Pencils: Frank Quitely, Warren Pleece

Inks: Frank Quitely, Warren Pleece

Covers: Karen Berger, John Eder

[i-r-readcomics]

2020 Visions

Volume: 1 #12

Repro-Man, Part Three

Writers: Jamie Delano

Pencils: Steve Pugh

Inks: Steve Pugh

Colours: James Sinclair, Digital Chameleon

Covers: Stephen John Phillips

Featuring: Adam McWhirter, Zonia

Vertigo