Chapter 22 Spring 1950Planet Comics #64

Planet Comics #64 (Spring 1950) marks the

finale to the Futura Saga. It took far longer to

get there then I originally planned but the Planet

Comics issues I was seeking are pretty rare

and hard to get a hold of. Fortunately there are

friends and other resources that allowed me to

fill in the gaps in her story. This issue is one of

those online copies floating around.

Futura's tale began in Planet Comics issue #43

in July of 1946. Secretary Marcia Reynolds is

kidnapped from Earth and enslaved for medical

experiments by the Brain-Men of Pan-Cosmos.

She escapes, a bit too easily in fact, and steals

a ship intending to head back to Earth.

Unknown to Marcia Reynolds, now called

Futura by her captors, her escape is being

carefully monitored to measure her suitability for

inclusion into the Pan-Cosmos genome.

Planet Comics #64 (Spring 1950)

Planet Comics #64 (Spring 1950)

Forced into situations that test her mettle, Futura evades her intended fate and gains allies, makes enemies and is a central witness to the fact that messiahs can be dangerous to your health. As her story continues, Futura becomes a wild card and her presence as a destabilizing threat to the status quo could not be tolerated by those in power. Fortunately for Futura the fragmented leaders of occupied space are corrupt, lazy and not used to rebellion from their cowed populace. Futura meets every challenge, fighting back ferociously and without hesitation.

For Futura does not just defeat an opponent,

no. She utterly destroys an enemy by erasing

their entire culture leaving them without a power

base. What remains when she is done renders

them in a state where they are no threat for the

foreseeable future. While this tactic is not

necessarily the action of a hero it certainly is

that of a leader of nations. This Geo-political

approach on a galactic scale is something that

having recently emerged from a devastating

World War the readers of the day could easily

identify with.

Planet Comics

was a science fiction comic-book title

produced by Fiction House and issued

from Jan. 1940 (issue 1) to Winter 1953

(issue 73). Like many of Fiction House's

early comics titles, Planet Comics was a

spinoff of a pulp magazine, in this case

Planet Stories, which featured space

operatic tales of muscular, heroic space

adventurers who were quick with their 'ray

pistols' and always running into gorgeous

females who needed rescue from bug-

eyed space aliens or fiendish interstellar

bad guys.

Planet Comics #1 (January 1940)

Planet Comics was considered by noted fan Raymond Miller to be "perhaps the best of the

Fiction House group," as well as "most collected and most valued." In Miller's opinion, it

"wasn't really featuring good art or stories... in the first dozen or so issues," not gaining most

of "its better known characters" until "about the 10th issue." "Only 3 of its long running strips

started with the first issue... Flint Baker, Auro - Lord of Jupiter, and the Red Comet."