boston's future, illustrated
DESCRIPTION
A collaboration with the Boston Comics Roundtable. Credits: 1. Automated tourism: Ron LeBrasseur; 2. Time travel: Cathy Leamy; 3. Governor Affleck: Roho; 4. Rising sea level: Jesse Lonergan; 5. Reserved parking: Patrick Flaherty & E.J. Barnes; 6. Hybrid ostriches: Eric Boeker; 7. Giant robots attack: Clayton McCormack; 8. Future archaeologists: Jaime Garmendia & Shelli Paroline; 9. Citgo sign aliens: Dan Mazur | Coloring by Braden D. Lamb | Grey tones by RohoTRANSCRIPT
14 JANUARY 21, 2011 | THE BOSTON PHOENIX | THEPHOENIX.COM
THE FUTURE, ILLUSTRATEDFORGET POLITICIANS, ECONOMISTS, OR INVENTORS — THE FUTURE OF BOSTON BELONGS TO THE COMICS
_BY THE BOSTON COMICS ROUNDTABLE
fThe Boston Comics Roundtable is a collective of comics artists and writers who’ve been meeting
weekly in Harvard Square since 2006. We approached this future-Boston project as a sort of moderated “jam comic,” an improvised group effort in which one cartoon-ist draws a panel, then passes it off to another who adds
a panel of their own, and so on, usually resulting in a weird, amusing Frankenstein monster of a story. In this case, each cartoonist went off on their own and came up with a scene from the coming century, which we then fit together into a sequence. While we realize that the Boston area is loaded with economists, political scien-
tists, engineers, inventors, city planners, and other high-brow plutocrats who think they have a handle on where society is going, we cartoonists will put our predictions up against anyone’s!
To learn more about the BCR, go to bostoncomicsroundtable.com.
2040: silver line goes sentient. governor affleck bombards self
with gamma rays to deal with problem.
2030: time travel improves diversity of area colleges.
move-in day traffic, not so much.
2020: boston becomes first city to fully automate tourism.
2070: brainy bostonians solve energy crisis with
invention of hybrid ostrich. golden era begins.
...very little.2050: global warming lifts sea levels. little changes
for resilient locals.
2080: golden era ends. 2090: mutant archaeologists enslave remaining humans.
discovery of ancient warning causes invaders to abandon city.
2100: alien race that founded boston finally returns, awaits report
from sentry left behind.