"2020 Visions" - Jamie Delano

When writing your visionary sci-fi dystopias, always make sure to put them at least 50 years in the future. If you've got marauding rape-robots roaming the streets of New Neon York in 2013, you've also got a story that's embarrassingly dated before the paperback even comes out. Not that there's much embarrassing in Jamie Delano's quartet of future tales, "2020 Visions": if some of these possibilities already seem shut off, no one said comics had to be prophecies. Delano, best known for his work on "Hellblazer" and "Animal Man," can over-bake his prose a little, but the sheer range of invention in display here is as intoxicating as the viral disease that threatens Manhattan in the opening (and best) story. Frank Quitely, Warren Pleece, James Romberger and Steve Pugh each illustrate a story. Warning: the collected edition available for purchase is in b&w instead of the original mood-setting colors, which is an ugly shame.