Lost In The Future Vol 1: The Storm by Damian & Alex Fuentes

translated from the original French by Tom Imber.

This cute portal fantasy revolves around a group of school kids who go on a field trip to the ruins of a castle once owned by the Knights Templar. As a thunderstorm approaches, their teacher calls them all back to the bus. One “nerdy” group is carefully navigating a set of tower stairs down when a bully named Piero decides to give them a scare. Unfortunately for everyone, he’s successful, and like a total douchecanoe accidentally sends both himself and Sara, who uses crutches to walk, careening towards the central stairwell. Her friends try to save her but lightning strikes the crumbling foundation, sending them all tumbling into the pit below.

So far so horrifying, but it gets worse as rainwater begins to fill the pit. The kids try to find an exit. What they find instead leads them on a journey into a very different world, populated by monsters and knights and both people and things who aren’t at all what they seem to be. Will the kids be able to make their way home in one piece? Will some of them even want to?

I’ll be honest, with the state of the world as it is today, I did not want to look up whether the Knights Templar were an organization who deserved to feel as unjustly persecuted as they did. My hazy grasp of European history, which may very well be influenced by Hospitaller propaganda and is absolutely influenced by my knowledge of early Islamic history, suggested that they don’t. But I wound up looking it up anyway because I sure do hate talking out of my butt! And lol at what I discovered almost entirely supporting the opinions I already had. Sure it sucks when your own turn on you, but when your entire premise is killing — often unjustly — in the name of God, the amount of sympathy I have for your organization could fit on a single fingernail paring.

But yeah, in this Middle Grade graphic novel, the point of having the Knights Templar there is less for the propaganda than for the history-based mysticism, which is totally fine! Even better is the fact that the main friend group is wonderfully diverse. Piero is a dolt, but it pleases me that his come to Jesus moment happens when a (white cis) knight essentially sits him down and does the emotional labor of getting him to understand that he needs to stop being a jerk and start trying to make genuine friends with the kids he’s been bullying. It’s so nice to see a man in a position of privilege and power actually step up and correct a harasser, thereby setting a good example for readers to hopefully follow. It shouldn’t always be up to people who are actually suffering from injustice to stop and fix their abusers.

The ending definitely sets up for the next volume, which I am very much interested in reading. The art style feels very influenced by thin-line animation, and the layouts are easy to follow. The lookout point, especially, is highly stylized and breathtakingly rendered. This was a fun way to kick off a cool speculative fiction comic for kids that still realistically tackles the challenges they face as ordinary kids even in extraordinary circumstances.

Lost In The Future Vol 1: The Storm by Damian & Alex Fuentes was published November 26 2024 by Papercutz and is available from all good booksellers, including