Because a happy future is a thing of the past

I was spending most of my Sunday reading Hellblazer, and it got me thinking about how well it seems to capture the spirit of the ’80s (though I can’t be sure, having missed them myself). The rampant stratification, Thatcher’s each-to-his-own politics, the nihilism and the rise of nazi gangs all mix very well with demons and occult magic.

You get the picture of a crumbling world assaulted by debauching yuppie demons from one side, and witch-burning right-wing Christian nuts, whose god really is the fire and brimstone god of the Westboro Baptist Church, from the other. And then John Constantine in the middle, always trying (very reluctantly) to postpone the seemingly inevitable apocalypse.

Though I really like Hellblazer, my standing all-time favourite comic series is The Invisibles. Interestingly enough, it seems to be about the ’90s in the same sense that Hellblazer was about the 80′s; it’s full of parallel realities, psychedelic drugs, wierd clothes and way too many words with »cyber« in them.

While Hellblazer has a rather stable reality, the world of The Invisibles seems to be in a perpetual state of identity crisis. It doesn’t seem to know if it really exists or not, and what to do about it. There isn’t even a clear line between good and evil, and time itself is frequently bent.

Maybe it’s the gloomy atmosphere of Hellblazer getting to me, but when I started thinking about what would classify the 00′s, I though of continued and worsened identity crisis, to the point where there isn’t any consensus at all about anything, and where all generalizations are regarded as equally arbitrary.

But  most of all I thought about the widespread lack of faith in the future. A happy future does indeed, like in Chumbawamba’s »Pass It Along«, seem to be a thing of the past in the public mind. God, I’m sick of this century already.