Comic books are obsessed with peering into the future. Usually the results aren't particularly cheery - as in the post-apocalyptic world seen in the classic X-Men tale Days of Future Past, which serves as inspiration for the latest mutant film - because, well, a shiny happy future wouldn't make for much of a story. Thankfully, when comic books get all Nostradamus about the real world, they tend to be a little bit cheerier. Sometimes, anyway. Over the course of human history comic books have prefigured great technological discoveries, epoch-changing inventions and cultural trends. But they've also foreshadowed natural disasters and other traumatic world events within their four-colour pages in a eerie manner, making us wonder if the writers and artists knew something we didn't know. Or they were just tapping into the collective consciousness to give some dudes in spandex something fun to fight. There are predictions that came true decades later, when we finally caught up to the superheroes; predictions that happened weeks before, or even days; and predictions which weren't so much foresight as accidentally spilling state secrets. Here are fifteen times comics looked into the crystal ball, resisted the urge to throw it at a supervillain, and gave us a look into our future.
15. Archie Knew About Dubstep In 1972
At the moment Archie comics are in the process of breaking out of their perpetual-fifties nostalgic purgatory and are becoming some of the most up-to-date and progressive titles on the stands, from introducing an openly gay character to Riverdale High School to tapping into the zombie craze with the gore-filled Afterlife With Archie (seriously; it's awesome). It wasn't always this forward thinking, though, as this panel from a 1972 issue shows. Considering he was responsible for a string of irritating bubblegum novelty hits around the time, it seems pretty rich for Archie to be mocking the music of 2012. Amongst all the other revelations in this story, where Archie is transported forty years into the future because comic books, is the electronic music boom, which at the time was but a glimmer in Kraftwerk's robotic eyes. The creators of Archie might not have gotten youngster's reaction to "computer music" quite right - teems of sweaty people chewing their faces might have been a bit much for the all-age comic - but they got the means of production, the timing and the laziness dead on.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
