Rockets and Prophecies: “The Future Was Then” at the Cartoon Museum – The Never-Ending History of Tomorrow

Once upon a time, the future looked so bold and bright, didn’t it? The mid-20th century was bursting with heroes like Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers and Dan Dare, all rocketing us toward an exhilarating Space Age. So how accurately did those old comics predict today? The Cartoon Museum in Fitzrovia puts those vintage strips back under the microscope in the exhibition “The Future Was Then”, and the results are (as you might expect) equal parts bizarre and hilarious.

The Jupiter Fallacy of Jupiter and Digital Prophecies

The Space Age is almost 70 years old now, yet we still haven’t made it past the Moon, teleportation devices remain stubbornly offline, no alien invasion has materialised, and we’re nowhere near landing on Jupiter (which science now knows doesn’t even have a solid surface). In short, most of the comics’ futuristic visions have remained charming misfires.

Yet some details feel eerily familiar:

• The vertical-landing rockets from Thunderbirds are now reality.
• A comic published in the 1980s correctly foresaw that networked computing would transform every aspect of life from the 1990 onward.
• More recently, the 2019 series Undiscovered Country accurately predicted an increasingly isolated United States and a devastating pandemic.

The New Tone of Dystopia: Judge Dredd

The real star of the show is the 2000 AD anthology, which set a fresh dystopian tone for visions of the future. When the magazine launched in 1977, its title felt thrillingly futuristic; even its creators never expected it to last until the actual year 2000.

“The Future Was Then” brings together more than 80 original comic pages that tell stories of humanity’s fate stretching from 1990 all the way to the year 4000 AD, an astonishing 2,000-year narrative span that is extremely rare in fiction.

Whether you grew up devouring these comics or are simply curious about that era’s boundless imagination, this exhibition is mesmerising, eye-popping and awe-inspiring. Here’s hoping this wonderful little basement museum (the Cartoon Museum) itself has a very long future ahead.

Exhibition Title: The Future Was Then

Venue: Cartoon Museum, 63 Wells Street, London W1A 3AE

Dates: Continues until 21 March 2026