Back to the Future: Nostalgia and Reflexivity in Smolderen and Clérisse’s Atomic Empire

Thierry Smolderen and Alexandre Clérisse’s graphic novel Atomic Empire (2013) stands out as a reflexive and intertextual work of science fiction in which multiple metanarrative loops intersect and blur the distinctions between reality and representation, past and future, and perception and psychosis. The story alternates between various space and time frames connected through the psyche of the main character, who, in response to childhood trauma, constructs a mental universe in which works of 1950s science fiction allow him interplanetary contact with a future civilization. This graphic novel revisits the futuristic aesthetic of this era and its innovative designs in material culture through the lens of contemporary nostalgia, with citation-based devices that reflect on 1950s iconography.