Nothing is more important to a good story than the setting.
Settings give characters context, rules and limitations. Sometimes authors can use settings that we are familiar with to subvert our expectations and introduce nuanced ideas. For example, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum follows a young Girl named Dorothy, who lives on a farm in Kansas with her aunt and uncle. In this part of Dorothy’s story, she feels stagnant and longs for a more colorful life, somewhere “Over the Rainbow”. As the readers, we are lulled into a sense of comfort because we are introduced to her in a world that we recognize. The author then subverts expectations by turning this American pie fairytale into a surrealist nightmare. A tragedy befalls Dorothy that causes her to suddenly slip into another dimension where nothing is as it seems. We are then left to experience the mystery and politics of Oz with her in real time. This book was published in May of 1900, since then science fiction and fantasy writers have been using settings in innovative ways to dissect the world around us.
With contemporary science fiction we see a pattern with projects like Paper Girls, Yellow Jackets, I Saw the TV Glow, and Stranger Things. They are all a part of a science fiction subgenre movement called retro-punk. According to a Medium article by Vardan Frias, “Retropunk encompasses the ideology and aesthetics of the 1890s to the 1980s, from Steampunk (1890s) to Cassette Futurism (1980s)”.
Retropunk as a narrative device in science fiction is more prevalent now than ever, but why? The answer lies within the subtext of these stories. These narratives often follow a protagonist in a transitional stage in their life. They are either adolescents or adults whose actions are driven by their young counterparts.
Jane Schoenbrun’s I Saw the TV Glow follows two teens and their obsession with a 90s television science fiction show called The Pink Opaque. The show is a metaphor for transgenderism as the titular characters feel like they are parallel universe versions of the two pink opaque protagonists who are of the opposite sex.
The narrative of Ashley Lyle and Bart Nickerson’s Yellow Jackets jumps between 1996 and present day. The story follows a Girls Varsity soccer team who become stranded in the wilderness following a plane crash. The story displays the different ways in which the traumatic events in the wilderness ultimately stunts their ability to become fully functional adults. The girls develop PTSD that manifests in different ways and they are all forever tethered to one another by a supernatural event that occurred in the summer of 1996.
In the case of Midnight Comics, their use of retro-punk is tied to historical significance. In the 1971 issue of DC Comics Hell-Rider Magazine we saw the debut of the first Black Female Superhero, The Butterfly. Las Vegas cabaret singer by day and Super Heroine by night. Marian Michaels was a high-flying crime fighter. She wore a brilliant winged costume adorned with an anti-gravity device/mini-jet for propulsion with high-intensity strobe lights to blind her foes. Midnight Comics has continued the story of The Butterfly in their Anthology Tales From Midnight in which we follow the last mission of The Butterfly. Even though her crime fighting days are over we see snippets of her daughter Yara and how she will grow up to become Midnight Comics original superhero Blue Morpho.
Midnight Comics stated that their upcoming comic Blue Morpho will take place in the 90s. Another significance with this time period is the Rodney King incident in which King was brutally beaten by the police after being stopped for speeding. The racial unrest of the time will be a huge backdrop for Yara given her passion for social change and activism.
Little Marvin’s Horror Anthology Them: The Scare is another notable series that uses the 90s and the Rodney King incident as the backdrop for its narrative. Them follows LAPD detective Dawn Reeve as she investigates a string of gruesome murders that's connected to her past. Throughout the series we see Dawn juggling a double whammy of being a police officer and a Black Woman. She faces pushback from a community that disapproves of her line of work while simultaneously fighting to be looked at as an equal by her colleagues.
There is a general consensus that contemporary science fiction narratives focus more on the past in an attempt to capitalize on nostalgia. I would argue the opposite. Across the board we are just more socially conscious than we’ve ever been. Rather than being focused on the future, I see creatives that are focused on reconciling with the past in order to create a better present. It’s now more important than ever to know your history.
When asked about writing about the future, the late Ray Bradbury stated that he’d rather prevent it than predict it. He ended the quote with the statement “to hell with more, I want better”. The aforementioned stories are necessary because they use the vehicle of science fiction, horror and fantasy to communicate uncomfortable truths about our social climate and ask for better. Hopefully stories like these can continue to inspire change and foster an ideal future that can exist outside the panels of a comic book page.
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