Futura - Chapter 21

Planet Comics #63 (Winter 1949) gives us the penultimate chapter to the Futura Saga. In this issue one can see where Futura's long, strange journey has been leading. Alliances shift rapidly as Futura once free of the Jar-Heads, turns against the very enslaved mutated people, albeit mind-controlled, she once sympathized with.

There is a lot of good imagery in this chapter that profiles Futura without the cheesecake that could be so common in her story. The last panel of page three is nearly iconic and the battle between the mutants and the Hawkmen is magnificent.

This chapter firmly establishes Futura in a setting more reminiscent of the Alex Raymond-drawn Flash Gordon strip. Yet familiarity with other popular forms of entertainment would not save the character from limbo. With only one more issue in the Planet Comics series to feature her story Futura would soon be consigned to the occasional black and white reprint of Golden Age comic books. An original story featuring a "Futura" character would not be produced until the early 1980s, a gap of thirty years between appearances.