My First Exposure to Dystopia

From September 1981's episode of The White Mountains

As a Cub/Boy Scout, I was an avid reader of Boy's Life, the official magazine of the Boy Scouts of America. Being a kid, not many specifics of the magazine has stuck with me with the major exception of a cartoon that ran on the last page called The White Mountains. For years, I retained vague memories of this monthly picture into a a future world where alien tripods ruled over an enslaved earth, while a small band of boys struggled to stay free and find the rest of the freedom fighters.

Because the internet is awesome, I was able to find a complete collection of the comix strips at the Haunted Closet. Looking at them now, the comics don't have the same magic as they did back in the day - Frank Bolle's drawings are relatively pedestrian, and the pacing is breakneck in order to fit in enough information to keep you coming month to month. Still, to a young, impressionable kid, this was a first tasty exposure to a dystopia - and I liked it! It was a gateway drug into even more entertaining and disturbing scifi stories, while also fueling my love of graphical stories. It's nice to be able to see them again, and learn that the comics continued for years, covering all of John Christopher's Tripods Trilogy: The White Mountains, The City of Gold and Lead and The Pool of Fire. Enjoy!