The Futura is Now!

It has been quite a while since I posted a chapter of the late-1940s Planet Comics serial, Futura. The reasons for not continuing her saga are partly exhaustion, partly the odd change of direction in the story and partly due to the fact that the original resources for the images were of such poor quality that posting the images would be a disappointment if not to a reader than to myself. The work involved in cleaning up the images would be an exercise in diminishing returns.

But I really like the story and when revisiting it recently I decided to continue posting the series. For those of you not familiar with Futura here is a quick summary:

Futura is the story of a secretary kidnapped by aliens in order to provide superior genetic material for their dying race. Futura, however, rebels and escapes her captors, vowing to make her way in the cosmos while fighting to bring down the evil masters of the galaxy.

The story of Futura is part John Carter of Mars and part Buck Rogers all framed within what may or may not be an elaborate dream. For the most part the Futura Saga does not use the typical cliches of the dream scenario to cheat a reader out of the story experience. The creators also forego the usual attempts to exploit cheesecake imagery common to popular culture of the time though there are plenty of examples of "Good Girl Art" in the series. Futura joins such creations as Mysta and Gale Allen as strong leading women characters of the era not dependent upon a male to move the story along. Various Fiction House creators worked on the series during the decade long run in Planet Comics.

Here are the first eight chapters of the Futura Saga so you can get all caught up:

Futura - Chapter 1

Futura - Chapter 2

Futura - Chapter 3

Futura - Chapter 4

Futura - Chapter 5

Futura - Chapter 6

Futura - Chapter 7

Futura - Chapter 8

And for background here is everything else Futura-related, including the exploitative and short-lived 1980s revival of the character: Everything Futura on Lady, That's My Skull.

Chapter 9 coming soon!