Futurama comics
I've been looking for some comic that's currently-running, funny, light-hearted, breaks the fourth wall occasionally and leaves me in a happy mood. Like, comics that have in-jokes for continuity people but don't require you to have bought and read everything ever printed. Something to the likes of Deadpool, JLI, Young Justice or Impulse. The last running and fun comics used to be Blue Beetle and Cable & Deadpool, and they got cancelled. But I think I finally found my fix of just plain fun comics: the Futurama comics.
The Futurama comic by Matt Groening's Bongo Comics has been running since 2000 and it's still alive and well. I'm not sure if these comics are canonical in the Futurama universe, but they're pretty loyal the TV series and I was delighted to find all kinds of cool references to the series. Here's some stuff that felt especially cool to see in my opinion:
-a couple of cracks about how Leela keeps crashing an advertisement screen all the time -hat full of yoghurt appears -in a comic made after DVD movie "Bender's Big Score", Bender's age is checked with a handy machine and said to be 27 203 years, due to timetravel hi-jinks -Torgo's executive powder is also seen -the box that contains the universe makes one appearance
And as you can see from that panel, there's also been Simpsons/Futurama crossover stuff. Here's a part where the Simpsons look around in Planet Express building, trying to find something that could help them with what they're trying to do:
Those pages were from a comic in which Simpsons characters end up in Futurama universe. Before that, the Futurama charas had ended up in Simpsons universe. This was due to the evil floating brains that had the ability to make you get stuck in works of fiction. Simpsons are fictional in Futurama universe, and there was a bunch of Simpsons comics around, so the brains made Futurama characters go into the Simpsons comics.
I get a kick out of this short scene where the brains make Futurama characters get stuck in an old comic book ad:
*LOLs @ the furniture-kicking part, Fry with muscles, Bender kicking sand so much that Leela's getting buried underneath it*
Later on, the Futurama characters end up in Springfield and get separated. Bender meets Homer.
Fry decides he needs to find the heroes of the comic; the Simpsons. So he pretends to be a substitute teacher in Springfield's school, in order to get to talk with Bart Simpson.
Later Fry does manage to convince Bart, and they go look for the others.
And I'm including this mainly because Futurama, Simpsons AND Aliens together is like the coolest thing ever. (Don't worry about the facehugged characters; this is only a one-panel-gag about how "safe" working conditions the Planet Express crew has, and there will be no chestbursters later on.)
So anyway. All the scans so far were from the Simpsons crossovers. I'll post pages from actual Futurama issues next.
Issue #1: Fry's wanting to buy some useless crap from 20th century, and Leela thinks the shop's trying to rip Fry off.
Futurama #2:
Futurama #5 cover:
Futurama #8 (this X-men parody will later in the comic turn out to be a dream):
Futurama #9, where Fry and professor Farnsworth accidentally get their bodies switched while in their sleep. I'm amused by Farnsworth waking up in Fry's body and his reaction. Also, Bender's reaction to Fry/Farnsworth's reaction. Heehee :)
Futurama #10; the characters are sleeping at the Planet Express building, and I'm posting this panel because of: -slightly disturbing nekkidness -funny sleeping poses -Fry looking cute sleeping like that
Futurama #11 is IMO a lot of fun, maybe even my fav issue, but I'm just posting a context-is-for-the-weak panel:
Futurama #14 is a cool comic because it's got a Gimmick. Professor Farnsworth breaks the fourth wall in the splash page to explain the gimmick, he falls asleep, other characters wonder wtf he's talking about, and then things proceed on like Farnsworth described.
Futurama #15: Fry meets Frank Miller's head.
Futurama #16: the characters are trying to find a new school for professor's clone kid, Cubert.
Futurama #17. The previous issue had ended with a cliffhanger. The crew had come back on Earth but found no one else on the planet. The next issue begins like this:
The guys from Omicron Persei 8 arrive and declare Earth to be theirs, on the grounds that it's uninhabited and they can just take it.
Omicron Persei 8 aliens - Lrrr and Ndnd - tell Fry and Bender that there's gotta be at least 100 citizens on Earth; if there's at least 100 people there, the planet is inhabited and the aliens can't just claim it to themselves. So Fry realizes that they've got to find a way to gain at least that 100 people on Earth, in order to avoid getting invaded.
Ndnd plans how to renovate their new planet.
Fry, Leela and Bender set up a lot of mannequins and Zoidber's old shells to fool Lrrr and Ndnd. The aliens have trouble distinguishing human faces so the plan has chance of succeeding. Ndnd is suspicious, though.
They've found out that everyone has disappeared from Earth because there's been a timetravel accident.
Futurama #20: this one has another damn cool gimmick. Bender gets angry, tears a hole into the comic page, and the story gets all screwy and meta.
Bender goes through the hole in the comicbook page and won't come back. Stuff happens and things escalate. In the end, the only one who can fix everything is You, the comic reader:
This trick is pretty cool and imaginative. I love how it changes the story. But it's harder to show in scans what happens here, so I won't try showing that story part.
Futurama #22:
During the splash page, Fry complains to Bender about how these doctor's inspections are so invasive. Bender says he's got something on his chest.
Bender's lousy cooking has been turned into a miracle cure for losing weight; he cooks so horribly that people don't want to eat his stuff, so they've got weightloss. President Nixon thinks this is a good thing, and he starts campaigning for Bender to be in responsibility for the physical fitness of all the citizens.
Bender starts a sweatshop with hard labour so that people will get thinner and more fit there:
Fry goes to see Bender and complains about this whole sweatshop thing.
Futurama #25: Fry, Bender and Leela lose their career chips:
They eventually get tired of being non-persons:
Futurama #24. In this comic, Bender and the "What If" machine are playing poker. In the comic, the "What If" machine is also able to speak and has a personality. The machine keeps getting asked "What If" -questions, which annoys him quite a lot, as he's trying to play poker and stuff. In one of the What If answers, happens this:
I love how forgetful professor Farnsworth is :)
Bender's doing terribly in poker. He loses his money and starts betting his bodyparts and microchips. He keeps losing and all that's left of him is his head. He bets and loses his ethics chip, except it turns out to be the self-destruct chip. So "What If" machine explodes in the ending.
Well, that cracked me up anyway :p
There's 42 issues of Futurama, and I really wanna post more scans from various issues. But seeing how I've already got a huge amount of scans in this entry and this one is a fitting ending, I'll stop now. I think I'll be posting a sequel, with a bunch of scans from the rest of the issues.
I was looking for Bongo comics website to see if I could post some official preview pages here instead of random pages of my own picking/choosing. But I can't seem to find an official website for Bongo Comics. Looks like the same kind of thing as with www.mattgroening.com? I can find plenty of fan stuff but no official informative site online. It's a shame that they don't seem to advertise these Futurama comics too much.
And I also want to ask a little question. I'd wanna post some comics that were published in my country, but they haven't been translated into English, and I'd need to do that myself. So, are fan-translated scans still okay to post here?