Arthur Radebaugh wrote a syndicated Sunday comic series titled "Closer Than You Think" in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The series featured optimistic scenes of a future with robots, floating houses and smart transportation networks. Here is the "Super-Metropolis Map of 1975" published in 1961. Thanks to the
Paleo-Future Blog for this image.
The "regional cities" of tomorrow will be nearly continuous complexes of homes, business centers, factories, shops and service places. Some will be strip or rim cities; some will be star-shaped or finger-shaped; others will be in concentric arcs or parallels; still others will be "satellite towns" around a nucleus core. They will be saved from traffic self-suffocation by high-speed transportation - perhaps monorails that provide luxurious nonstop service between the inner centers of the supercities, as well as links between the super-metropolises themselves.
Here is a cropped image focusing on the map.
People from Atlanta may be horrified to learn that they live in the "Chattanooga Strip" and who knew that Tulsa was going to be such an important city? So do you live in a "strip" on a "rim" or in a "finger" and what's the difference? I'm still waiting for that Monorail!
This a typical immigrant coming to the US to find whatever opportunities are out there story. If you really want to follow it the trick is to click on what's supposed to be Tennessee but really is too far south and east. Then click the right arrows. There seem to be parallel stories about slavery and some traffic accident in Panama. Again, the relationship to this graphic novel is unclear. Below is a typical sequence showing parts of the story.
