There is a time for everything,
and a season for every activity
under the heavens:
–Ecclesiastes 3:1
While reading Scout Comics’ Forever Forward, I kept thinking about the biblical wisdom on life, ambition, purpose and contentment found in the Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes. Now, I have absolutely no idea if the creators of Forever Forward profess to any religious beliefs, much less what they may be. But writer Zack Kaplan obviously had many of these same life lessons in mind.
In the opening issue, gifted physicist Lewis Moody, has completely lost himself in his research project, sending objects and small living animals forward in time. In a freak accident – as they all are – his machine sends him and his four best friends into the future. The catch: they can only travel forward in time, always in 33-year jumps. They hope to eventually find a future that has mastered traveling backwards as well, and so return to their original time.
What has been will be again,
what has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the sun.
–Ecclesiastes 1:9
Moody’s hope is based on the idea that the evolution of science, technology and society as a whole always progresses upwards, toward more knowledge and discovery. But, as the book of Ecclesiastes states multiple times, human history progresses along more of a cyclical path. We humans tend to make the same mistakes over and over.
Nowhere does Forever Forward make this theme clearer than in a wonderful double-page spread in the fifth and final issue. In one page, Lewis Moody travels through centuries, watching society grow and then destroy itself again and again, just as we have done to ourselves in the past. From the top of the page to the bottom, darkness increases as night falls and hope is lost.
What do people get for all the toil and anxious striving
with which they labor under the sun?
All their days their work is grief and pain;
even at night their minds do not rest.
This too is meaningless.
–Ecclesiastes 2:22-23
For the first few issues – after Moody and his friends start jumping forward in time – they don’t find any rest. They encounter one disaster or danger after another, escaping only by jumping another 33 years into the future, hoping that the next world they meet will allow them a reprieve.
This is an obvious but clever metaphor for all the toil and anxious striving with which we constantly labor. Moody was living this way before that fateful accident, pouring all of his time and attention into his research. Unfortunately, he was also blowing off his friends, including his love interest, Natalie. But how often do I also find myself in the middle of another completely full, stressful work week, longing for that mystical time, somewhere in the future, when I’ll finally be done and can rest. Yet it never comes.
Although all of the quick 33-year jumps in succession do symbolize this central theme, this plot device also doesn’t allow us to spend much time in any one time period. We don’t get a deeper look at the future world until issue #3, making the first two issues less interesting than they could’ve been. And the future presented in issue #3 isn’t all that original – it’s basically a standard human vs. robot apocalypse.
Yet when I surveyed all that my hands had done
and what I had toiled to achieve,
everything was meaningless,
a chasing after the wind;
nothing was gained under the sun.
–Ecclesiastes 2:11
Finally, in the fourth issue, the story slows down a little bit. And that’s exactly what makes the last two issues of Forever Forward better than the first three. The characters start making bolder decisions, realizing that meaning and purpose may be found in staying put, rather than constantly jumping forward. And Lewis Moody also finally learns the lesson of simply living in the moment, rather than constantly chasing after the wind.
It took him long enough, too, since the message has basically been spelled out for us since issue #2. In this way, Forever Forward is a bit too obvious, the message told to us too directly, the time-travel shenanigans and foreshadowing a bit too noticeable to someone familiar with the genre.
On the other hand, the lessons are good ones. Lessons I try to teach my teenage students in my day job. In fact, I feel like middle-school students might be the best audience for Forever Forward – young teens, not too familiar with time-travel stories, searching for meaning and purpose in their life and future.
I know that there is nothing better for people
than to be happy and to do good while they live.
That each of them may eat and drink,
and find satisfaction in all their toil – this is the gift of God.
–Ecclesiastes 3:12-13
There is meaning and happiness in finding contentment in living a simple life. Maybe we don’t have to strive continually to make the future brighter, technology better, our homes bigger or ourselves richer. That doesn’t mean that we can’t learn from the mistakes of the past to improve ourselves and our world today – as Moody’s time travel technology is used at the end of the book.
But, maybe today is enough. Sure, there will be good days and bad ones. Ones filled with joy and others with sadness. To everything there is a season. Still, today is all we really have. The future isn’t here, yet.
In all honesty, Forever Forward isn’t a particularly great comic. The main message is preached too directly. The foreshadowing is too obvious, making the ending no surprise. The main premise would’ve worked better as an ongoing series, rather than a miniseries. And although the premise itself is inventive, it somehow leads to a fairly unoriginal future dystopia. The art is at times very good – especially when displaying vast, detailed landscapes – but also inconsistent with too many unnecessary lines.
But the lessons being preached are good ones. The themes are reflected in the pacing and structure of the story. Everything in the narrative is planned out thoroughly. And it made me think about deep truths that affect my daily life. So, I’m content with what I got out of it.
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