Lileks reminisces about comics:

These books still have a tremendous pull, mostly for nostalgia’s sake. (As you may suspect, I am somewhat given to nostalgia.) I still read comics from time to time, depending on the artist, but I don’t keep up on anything. I got out when the future was still the future, and the moody grim cynical nihilism that was always an inch below the surface took over and defined “adult” comics. (Meaning, aimed at teens.) Now the future is the present; we all have gadgets and computers, space exploration is rote and dull, and the idea of the future – a place with jumpsuits and slender finned rockets and Planet Squads and men barking “Come in, Space Command!” to a hand-held mike – seems like a false alarm. There is no future, as such; there’s just more of the same. Quicker smaller better faster, but no big change. No skyscrapers with Saturnian rings around their apex, no 50th floor walkways, no interplanetary Congresses with Venusian fish-men applauding Future Superman for his exploits. In a way I envy the kid who grew up in the 50s, and read comics in the basement, confident he’d live in a different world than the one his parents had made. In a way I don’t envy him at all. At least I grew up to see Spider-Man swing through Manhattan in a most convincing fashion. If only on the screen.

Someone get that man some Schlock Mercenary before it's too late.

The boy in the basement became a teen and got hooked on Corbin's "Fever Dreams".

The girl in the basement grew up to build rockets and is taking people to that future. ;->

I'll give a plug to the anime series "Planetes." I have some technical quibbles (Lunar He3 mining is a big theme) but the message, that there are people that want to go into space, comes through loud and clear.

The dream was knocked down a bit with the lackluster government programs, but it isn't gone in this world, and I'm convinced it will be back in a big way within a decade or two.