The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1203: 2020 Visions #6, October 1997

The end of the story in today's comic fell a little flat for me. Things kind of turned out like I expected them to, and I was kind of hoping for a bit more twist. That said, a lot of the story is framed around an expected storm, La Tormenta, that seems to sit off the coast biding its time, but a foregone conclusion nonetheless. Perhaps that's what the story was doing, sailing toward its predictable, but unavoidable conclusion. Perhaps.

There's some interesting revelations today to do with Ms. Atlanta's sexual liaisons. It turns out that the detective whose investigation has been following Jack's own is actually the young virtual lady that Jack has been having a regular Monday night date with. And, when asked under heavy narcotic influence, he admits to wanting to be a girl to a psychopathic body modifier, who then gives the detective breasts.

Shit gets weird. In some ways Hector is forced to confront something about himself, but being forced into something like that can be very damaging. For Hector, we'll never know, but he does not seem happy with his new body at the story's end. And Jack takes it all in stride, oh so coolly, like the noir detectives of old.

I've one other story from 2020 Visions, illustrated by the magnificent Frank Quitely. They're good stories, but nothing spectacular as far as I can tell. I was unaware until recently, however, that there is some crossover between the four narratives that take place in this series. Perhaps I should track the rest down and see if it reads better as a whole, rather than as parts.

(Just turned  around to check, and we've got a naughty one tomorrow! Always fun.)

More to come...

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1202: 2020 Visions #5, September 1997

Jack Atlanta does a neat little thing with drag in today's issue. In the previous issue, she shaves her 'stache and puts on a slinky dress in order to infiltrate a salsa club. It turns out that these clubs are sexual outlets for the higher ups in the government, in that the dancing is erotic without being...naked, I guess. After this little adventure, Jack returns home, puts on her real clothes, pencils the mustache back in, in anticipation of it growing again, and then wonders if the man she met at the club the previous night will recognizer her "out of drag."

This is interesting because, for Jack, drag is dressing in a more conventionally feminine style, rather than the Miami Vice look that she prefers. So this is a female-identifying person who dresses in a stereotypically male mode but then puts on drag that conforms, from a societally conventional perspective, to her self-identification. Drag is so damned interesting when you start thinking about it outside of the confines of stage performances. What does it mean for drag to be an everyday part of one's life, one's presentation of self? Really, we all wear drag. When I stand in front of a classroom, I am in teacher drag. When I go out to a bar or club, I am in recreational drag. We dress in particular ways to fit ourselves to particular situations - which, really, is drag.

Jack's "deviant" sexuality is also hinted at in this issue. The virtual dates she maintains on a weekly basis are with a young lady, hence the secrecy surrounding the establishment she frequents. On top of her blatant queerness, she also demonstrates a desire for virtual BDSM practices as well. Both of these identifications, of course, mark Jack as aberrant to the ruling class. In the fictional milieu this makes sense, but it also works as a nice metaphor for the practice of non-normative sexualities and identities in the late 90s when the comic was published. Remember, this is pre-50 Shades, so BDSM culture was still very much in the underground.

We'll finish up Jack's story tomorrow. More to come...

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1201: 2020 Visions #4, August 1997

Okay, back to it.

2020 Visions is a good comic, but it's rapidly becoming dated, with us being only 2 years away from the ostensible date of this series. Writer Jamie Delano tries to project 23 years into the future, but that's always a risky notion. While tech and mores can change quickly, they don't often follow what we think will be the dominant trends. For example, in this comic, no one seems to have smartphones, since in 1997 such a thing was not in the cultural consciousness.

And while the setting of today's story is a Miami that has seceded from the U.S., and come under draconian Catholic control, Delano and artist Warren Pleece do give us an interesting view of gender and sexuality under such a regime in the focal figure of private investigator Jack Atlanta. That's her up on the cover in the white suit. Jack is wonderfully gender queer, still using she/hers pronouns, but sporting a naturally grown pencil mustache, and dressing like one of the characters from the original Miami Vice. I wonder if this is intentional, as Crockett and Tubbs were exemplars of masculinity for quite a while in the 1980s.

Sex and sexuality are handled in an interesting way. The world within which this Miami exists is eerily similar to The Handmaid's Tale. Fertility rates, though this time in men, have dropped off dramatically, creating a demand not only for fertile men, but also for black market babies. Jack's case, the disappearance of a young woman, leads her into this gruesome underworld. Furthermore, as Nueva Florida is under a Catholic government, many, if not all, divergent sexualities can only be pursued in private, and away from the prying eyes of the law. Jack indulges in backroom virtual sex that puts her heavily in debt, but this covert method is simply the only way she can satisfy her proclivities. It doesn't really sound that different from being queer in the 20th and many prior centuries.

More to come...