by Drew Baumgartner

This article contains SPOILERS. If you haven’t read the issue yet, proceed at your own risk!

Generation Gone, Aleš Kot and André Lima Araújo have consistently set up competing ideologies — Akio vs. General West, People vs. Government, Idealism vs. Realism, Generation vs. Generation — but the most important (and most nuanced) has probably been those of Elena and Nick. She’s a put-upon optimist, willing and able to take on the abuse of the world in order to Get Shit Done, while he’s a self-pitying, privileged nihilist who sees no future beyond destroying what little of the world he can before he dies. In many ways, they represent the poles we might set for the spectrum of attitudes of Millenials: either cooperate with a system designed to exploit you (and potentially make incremental changes from the inside), or try to blow it to pieces. Those are the extremes, but in increasingly divided times, it’s important to bear in mind that neither one is necessarily “correct.” Indeed, as Elena (and Generation Gone) rejects Nick’s “fuck the world” strategy, Baldwin seems to emerge with another. Continue reading →