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In the central episode of The Time Trap (1962), Belgian cartoonist Edgar P. Jacobs depicted what the world would be in the year 5060, as one of his heroes, Professor Philip Mortimer, is travelling through time in a machine one of his rivals, craving for revenge, has invented and, then, deliberately tampered with. After a nuclear war devastated the planet in the late 21st century, it is now ruled over by a totalitarian government and this episode shows the consequences of a “war to come”, which means regression for mankind as a whole. The influence of dystopian fiction works, like those by H. G. Wells, underpins the depiction of this nightmarish universe, along with the confiscation of technical progress by a handful of men and the spectre of a nuclear conflict looming ahead. However, Jacobs also takes advantage of this episode to convey a message of hope and a call for humanism, as shows the eventual victory of the “subjected” peoples, in which Mortimer plays a crucial part.