The Future Was Then features over 80 pages of original comic art alongside other items that tell stories about the future of the human race from 1990 to 4000 AD.

The exhibition includes original work from iconic futuristic worlds such as Tank Girl, Judge Dredd, Black Mirror, Buck Rogers and Thunderbirds, and original artwork by legendary artists such as Jamie Hewlett, Frank Bellamy and Sydney Jordan. Science fiction and dystopian comics give us possible visions of Earth’s future, imagining what may be in store for humanity. Will hope triumph, with space rangers taking to the cosmos to explore new worlds? Or will fear set in, with futuristic authoritarian regimes taking hold?

What did comic creators in the past think the future would look like?

Science fiction is a cornerstone genre of comics. The limitless budget offered by a blank page allows artists to create incredible, detailed worlds before our eyes.

Over the past hundred years artists have conjured visions of future police states, intergalactic travel, everyday cybernetic technology, humans leaving Earth and even – gasp – humans using computers on a daily basis. Many creators are influenced by the world around them as they create, leaving imprints of their modern-day in their future worlds. We will explore this in the exhibition through never-before-displayed items from Phoo Action by Jamie Hewlett & Mat Wakeham – a vision of 2004 rooted in the mid-nineties, and a precursor to Hewlett’s later work on Gorillaz.

Have any predictions of the future been right?

Creators have explored ideas and visions of the future for over a hundred years in art and comics and have often been influenced by the events that they are living through at the time. Sometimes you can see how this changes an artist’s ideas in real time – for instance, as probes sent out across the solar system discovered our closest neighbours were uninhabited, artists moved away from fantastical space beasts living on Mars towards uninhabited planets being colonised, or fantastical travel in other universes.

Occasionally visions of the future come true. More often they don’t! Either way, comics give us a way to consider threats and opportunities for the human race, and engage with ideas about our own future.