FINO (Futura In Name Only)

In 1980 Paragon Publications published Star Fems, a T&A title featuring hot babes wearing scanty lingerie while they traveled through space.

While there were a few other features included in the book the title of the series refers to a trio of Golden Age Planet Comics heroines brought together as the Star Fems. This book lasted only two issues, though the concept was later picked up by AC Comics (A revivified Paragon, responsible for Fem-Force and other exploitation titles) as a reprint.

The Star Fems team consisted of Mysta of the Moon, Gale Allen and Futura, all of whom were brought together across the far reaches of time and space to do things and stuff. In 1980 there was not much of a built-in audience for the Golden Age characters and not many people outside of hard-core historian fans and comic professionals knew of or had access to a Planet Comics run. None of that mattered though because they had giant breasts and there is always an audience for that ready to shell out cash.

That Star Fems is a labor of fan-love is obvious. Someone who admired the original serials attempted to make the characters contemporary but they did it through a pen held by a horny fanboy with a tingling groin driving him to distraction. All the stories typically featured impossibly contorted poses of barely-dressed or topless women, though admittedly within the Star Fems stories there was less of it. The Futura connection in these issues is actually very tenuous. In the revival series the characters were given various super powers and any existing resemblance, characterization and back story that existed did not really carry over from the Golden Age books. This is Futura in name only. Other than the creator personally liking the old serials there was no real reason to use the vintage characters. It would have been just as easy to create an original concept using three super heroes, something that could have retained more creator rights than public domain characters.

The two issues by Paragon and the reprint story by AC Comics have a sort of fanzine aspect about them with the expected quality of art and story. The second issue it should be noted, was drawn by Jerry Ordway, who would later do extensive work for DC Comics. To give some credit to the 1980 series the basic personalities and unstated sexual equality of Mysta, Gale and Futura stayed much the same as they were in the original serials. But where the Planet Comics characters were strong, independent women the Star Fems were strong, independent women who flashed their panties and had giant breasts.

Depending on where you work some of the images are not very safe for display, so here is the link to the online archive to enjoy at your convenience.

Star Fems #1 and #2 (1980 series).