Tommi Musturi

On Future…

You who have been following my doings have noticed I’ve included essays in the end of my recent books – just something that briefly explains my bit unusual approach towards making, the varying of styles, the themes within and what art is about to me.

When I started to form the appearance of Future as a book I had a plan to have an essay there as well. However, in the end I decided to leave it out just so I would not spoil the actual complicated experience. In other words: I do want to trust the reader.

However, as the Future editions are now mostly out (except English edition that’s out in August from Fantagraphics and Italian edition from D’Editore / Fortepressa that’s been postponed) I thought I might give a closer look behind the scenes of the book. Be alerted: this might spoil something. Meanwhile, I’ve indeed told most of the ideas behind the book in the previous interviews with Nicholas Burman (Solrad) and Ian Thomas (The Comics Journal).

If this is not enough, I will use my opportunity to tell a bit more…

First of all: Future is about ‘the possible futures of mankind’. That was the basic idea that pondered me 2012 when I started the project. I saw the world getting all fragmented, more and more complex, with overdose of false information aimed to influence, with existential dangers behind every corner, with identities being cracked into pieces… and a lot more. To me it seemed like most of the people had hard time trying to figure what’s ahead six months from the present. This is where Future started.

So, the script (that I worked mostly before jumping into images) tries to answer multiple questions. This is where the varying styles come in. From the start I knew I needed several different voices that would somehow explain their views on future from different perspectives. In other words the use of varying artistic and narrative styles is built inside the whole concept of the book. I had an intention to present the very different realities people of different classes live in. Imagine Future that was drawn with same well-defined style and you will most likely get my point – it would not work at all.

Another significant reason behind the use of breathtakingly many styles, rhetorics and ways to of storytelling comes from the world of today: my aim was to try to illustrate the actual super-hectic visual world that the generations grown up with social media live in. It’s scary but damn real and as a lifetime nerd I’ve got my share of it.

Though everything in my book is somehow connected, future is not linear and nor is the book. There ain’t ‘one story’ but multiple stories. There ain’t ‘one reality’ but multiple realities. This is against what readers mostly expect. I know some will try to read it linearly and connect but that is not the key. The paths of the stories might lead to each other but I would say they merely cross every now and then. So, Future indeed tries to reach to every direction instead of going from A to B. My aim was to make an extraordinary comic book with new kind of comic narration. Future (!) will show how well I did my job with it. I like to experiment.

If you try to place Future somehow it’d prolly get categorized as weird science ficfion. However – as most of the readers seem to read it – the events of the book refer mostly to what the world is ‘today’. The ‘sci-fi’ is there mostly as a wrapping while the content, ideas and proposals are societal. When I write ‘ideas’ I really mean it – I have never done a book with such an overflow of ideas. This also comes from the fact that the book holds inside three-digit amount of segments – strips, short stories, illustrations and textual elements. Meanwhile, I did edit out ca. 100 pages of material that you (one day) may (or may not) see getting released as shorties or something completely different.

The book of Future itself is somehow anarchistic, towards everything indeed – also the form of comic tradition. I’m recycling styles and ways of doing to the trigger the reader into specific tones of the characters and the reality they live in. I’ve often searched for contradictions where the style of the specific segment might be something very different from the actual message. In other words I’m using styles as baits of some kind to lure in the innocent reader. These contradictions aim to make the reader think. In my opinion that is necessary for all art – it’s the point where art is in dialogue with the reader / viewer and this dialogue is a must with such an abstract theme as ‘future’. Read: I’m not telling about something that existed (oh, but it DID, and it DID, and it DID…).

The starting points of the book were not precisely merry nor were the events that took place while it was in making – covid, war in Ukraine, far-right movements, dictators popping up like ugly flowers, fake news and many more things effected the result both in making but also in the content which I changed accordingly to my observations. The outcome is merely dystopic and the humour inside the book is rather black. Well, this is no news as my taste of humour is relatively dark and my outcome laconic.

The background work I made (behind the projects I was involved back then) took five years. I tried to travel through different ideas of ‘future’. That meant reading and watching a lot from mainstream science fiction to studies on future, books and essays on utopias and societal theories and also social media discussions. This research was meant mostly to ‘open’ my own thinking on what future might be and how it was seen throughout our written history. What’s notable is that while I started the book during relatively dark times the visions on future of mankind have been very varying. There are times when we’ve seen it all positively, as something developing or as something stable. It’s also notable that the perspectives my book presents are merely western. In other words my own cultural placement defines partly the book (negatively). However, while Future is in general relatively dystopic it also has elements of utopias and ideals – bit less than I would have wanted but these are the times.

The book does have a lot of sub-themes (tens of them) that I’m not going to explain here. As I wrote, it tries to answer multiple questions and the content is very much fragmented. However, I would like to point out one sub-theme that’s relatively general throughout the book: human identity. The book tries to stop the reader every now and then to question our values on life and the defining world around us. The question is: “Why do we do what we do?”. I’ve always told my students (when I have a change to teach comics) that comic as a form of art is exceptionally good in explaining causes and effects. That’s built inside the whole concept of comic art – one image with an event leads to another. In Future all its fragments build up a giant puzzle that explains itself all the time. Like an annoying relative that you have to live with.

In here we get to something that is essential for you, the reader: though Future is complicated and you most likely cannot read it at once, please pay attention to everything. This ain’t a book that you can browse through briefly. That would lead to that you cannot understand most of it. Peeling inside means richer experience while with browsing through you will end up in chaos (smiley). Remember: it’s all a wholesome – a graphic novel – though the presentation of it reminds of ‘a collection’. You are being fooled.

I have to point out that the book in all presents my own values in life. It’s no news I’m against capitalism. What’s prolly notable is that in Future I’m taking capitalistic tools in use in order to tell something different. This explains a lot of the appearance of the magazine-form but also the looks of book – a cheapo Marvel collection clone from 80s done by a bunch of forgotten people. I’ve in my earlier essays stated that ‘style’ is a capitalistic tool and my aim is go beyond it. That is my aim still. This means also that some of the ‘styles’ used are something that I’m not really fond of. Read: I’ve forced myself to draw ‘disgustingly’ in order to deliver some of the messages. This is also part of the contradiction in the book and an ugly challenge I had to take.

If you take a closer look you may find that the storylines often present a protagonist couple or a duo while some are devoted merely for monologues. This is nothing new compared to my previous graphic novels of Samuel and The Book of Hope. While Samuel very much presents an ‘individual in the world’ BOH presented a couple where the other defines the other. This is also something present in Future. In the end I propose that ‘we do not exist without each other’. This is one of the core ideas behind it all (since I think it’s true for life). The proposal is not human-centered but with ‘we’ or ‘us’ I mean everything on this little (still) greenish planet of ours.

Behind all the dystopias there is also an aim to present the Future as unlimited spectrum of possibilities. I mean: trying to explain something so soapy as future with one ‘truth’ (which – by the way – does not exist in long-term) would be just work of a fool. Our world is a changing ecosystem and so is Future. Indeed the book as much lies as it tells the truth, so, we’re even.

When I finally (after five years) started to actually sketch and draw Future I had to teach myself to draw in different ways. Some of the styles in the book can be tracked to my previous works while a lot of it was something unknown to me. I’m not a ‘natural’ drawer and my usual works are somehow mathematic and stiff. Before the actual drawing started I had defined the styles textually. These descriptions defined the actual moods and atmospheres but also reflected the different realities of the main characters of each segment. You may find a lot of referring to comics, art, popular and high cultures (and a lot more). An aware reader may also notice that the defined styles start to change whenever the story (or the position the reader looks at it) evolve.

Practically these styles I created illustrate the different times the events in the book take place in – from stone age to 1950s, from today to close and far futures, from imaginery worlds to dream states.

The book is contemporary. Just note that this kind of puzzled thinking and presentation is very common for contemporary literature. It’s not (yet) very common for comics though there are examples on it too. This all presents the state of human world which problems can not be explained linearly, with slogans, in a X (Twitter) message or from one perspective. If you take a look at Asian comics and movies you may find more wild ways of narration. As westerners we’re all grown up along Hollywood that proposes us a linear narratives. This is not true as everything (even our daily events) are much more complex. Nothing goes as planned and miracles do not usually happen. There are no heroes (as we do not need them).

If we take a closer look to the content of Future there are several main storylines that the reader reads in segments throughout the book. All the stories are mixed together while every single storyline presents more linear approach to its content:

‘Future Inc.’ is a storyline on two clones sent in space to search for life. The events take place in the far future where life on Earth no more exists. They’re still on their mission without knowing they’re carrying ‘life’ (like a disease). The segment is relatively ‘slap-stick’ with gags and twists. Note ‘the duo set-up’ and the asexuality of the characters (that gets turned upsidedown in the end).

‘Tristram The Magician’ presents ‘the past’ of ours. The protagonist is a magnificent (male) magician for whom everything is possible on stage (with little bits of magic) but nothing is possible in real life. He does not simply exist without his audience (that serves as ‘the other’ of the story). Meanwhile the storyline presents a small tale of ‘a dreamer’ living in the world of ‘magic’ and growing up towards ‘the real’. Note: ‘Tristram’ is of course stolen from Laurence Sterne with T. Shandy being one of my favourite novels.

‘The Reality Show’ is one of ’the disgusting’ parts I mentioned. It’s a parody on all the reality shows, media in general and also on the animal human desires. The segment owns a lot to 2000AD comics. It gives macabre visions of entertainment business and people’s wish to get more and more. The show is run by a company ‘MASH Inc.’ that’s the entertainment section of the Future Inc. corporation. In general The Reality Show does not really differ that much from what we can see streamed already.

If I had to select one key storyline of the book I would choose ‘Centra – The Lost City’. It’s a story about a imaginery place that the reader wanders towards to – sort of a timeless Hilton-like Shangri-La. It’s kind of hippy too, bit annoingly. The reader observes the city, it’s people and ways of living through the eyes of an outsider from our world. The segments explain (too many) the details of Centra in order to build up a vision of someone’s ‘ideal’. There is often too much text (on purpose). Among mostly dystopic visions of Future Centra offers merely an utopia – an independent society that presents something cozy.

‘The Burgess’ was the work title (that’s not visible anywhere in the book) for a storyline presenting an elder couple who run the only remaining corporation on Earth (Future Inc.). The couple has lost their connection with the reality and each other. They run the world with arbitrary actions and through automated processes (such as AI). The story starts with cold meaningless life of the couple and leads to ponderings on life and its meaning. Before the end the couple find comfort from themselves and tiny bits of humanity within too.

‘Culture’ takes place in our close future. It’s a dystopia of a far-right world where all art is declared illegal. The storyline follows a bunch of guerrilla artists and bohemians that decide to produce ‘the final exhibition’. These ‘vermins’ are presented through struggles in life and dialogues on what art is about. This is kinda of meta indeed and to be honest it’s something that the Finnish right-wing government at this very moment taking steps to. The bohemians finds their strength from each other, the collective.

Another segment held a work title of ’The Story of An Apple’. These short mute comics present the randomness of life by following an object (apple) that drifts through times and spaces. These segments also underline the idea of ‘cause and effect’ in comic narration. The events are both tragic and comical. The idea was to present the unpredictability of life and relativity of time and space (which is essential for the whole book of Future).

Artificial intelligence called IDA (Imperial Datum Analyzer) is ’the other’ narrator of Future. It intrudes the wholesome whenever it wants. IDA seems to monitor the content of the serie (remember, Future was released as ten magazines before the actual book) with an aim to censor the parts harmful for ‘the company’. The IDA segments are splattered around the the book as short stories and strips. Indeed, it seems like there would be several ‘Idas’ which gets answered in the interviews with the coders of this baby-faced ‘digital creature’. IDA is also the one who holds the reader’s corner (Future Forecast) of the book. This was an interactive element with readers of the magazines having option to ask IDA for anything they had in mind. The answers of IDA are as schizophrenic as its whole presence. If I would rewrite the book now I would include even more parts on artificial intelligence.

‘The FINC Archives’ are one or two page ‘lists’ from the archives of Future Inc. The perspective presents corporation’s ideals that are focused on controlling mankind and life in general. The outcome is a parody on history and how it could be written. The idea here was to wake the reader up to see what is in danger but also (parodically) show that the history is always the history of the strongest. Therefore, we must not aim to win.

There are several comic strips that are presented as typical newspaper comic strip pages. The strips are conceptual series or one idea single-shots. In ‘The Stoners’ a flintstony stone age man ends up to the golf course and as a politician (which refers to the MAGA movement and current Finnish government). ‘The Preemies’ puts anarchy in the mouth of kids playing, presenting the confrontation of generations (that is getting stronger at this very moment). ‘Protozoa’ is a serie of almost real life stories stolen (and edited) from social media forum discussions. ‘The Science’ contradicts the idea of ‘truth’ with the idea of ‘life’ (which is – no matter how much we’d like to control it – merely random). Some of the main storylines (like Tristram and IDA) have theirs strips too.

Along all the comic segments the wholesome includes lots of one page illustrations that are often presented with methods of advertising, overblowing their messages with slogans and visual outbursts. As I wrote, the wholesome was first published as ten 28-page magazines in smaller size than the actual book. The book-form contains these magazines including the covers, editorials and reader’s corners like it all would be a collection of publications from some undefined era. Read: the concept proposes that the idea of ‘time’ and ‘space’ shall be mixed. In the magazine form the covers were meant to trigger different people with their different styles. This course works differently in the book-form but we can’t get everything, right?

Future-book contains ten ‘editorials’ that started each of the ten magazines the book collects. These editorials talk straight to the reader with an aim to explain what the book is about. The protagonist of the editorials is a fictional storage worker in the Future Inc. corporation. He has an access to all the corporation archives. Throughout the book he presents the reader his findings and tries to explain what they mean. The way he speaks is bouncy and paranoid and he mixes the facts found with his own real-life struggles. In other words the whole Future serie is a creation of this half-crazy character that towards the end gets in trouble with the corporation, and finally gets deceased (before being defined as ‘waste’).

The main storylines and concepts are backed up with a dozen of short stories that often relate with the main storylines or explain something that’s left in-between.

I must also point out the typography that’s varying throughout the book. There are several different styles of lettering with main idea to support the specific tone of each storyline. From the available and upcoming editions English and Finnish are hand-lettered by me while rest run with Future Font (by Teo Tuominen) and a wider pool of fonts selected by me.

I’ve explained the core but this is still just the peak of the wholesome that will build up. I think I did not spoil too much. It will most likely take few years when I can myself read the book somehow objectively. Meanwhile, there are other books to be made…