The Futurians: Dave Cockrum's Forgotten Franchise - Part Two (Lodestone, 1985)

Welcome to Part Two of our look into Dave Cockrum's Forgotten Franchise...The Futurians!

After witnessing the success of Marvel Graphic Novel #9, Marvel offered Dave his own monthly Futurians series. Dave chose instead to release the series under a small independent company called Lodestone Publications. This gave him the ability to not only do a series that he created, but with characters that he would own himself. He was given full creative control, more money, and the freedom to publish racier content. The first issue would release in October of 1985.

The new series picked up right where the Marvel Graphic Novel had left off. The Inheritors had been defeated, but a new threat had risen from the fallen Meteors that were pulled down by the Sky-Gripper.

The Futurians are sent to investigate, and along the way they meet a few other heroes, Doctor Zeus, Hammerhand and Ms. Mercury. Jack O'Finagle also shows up, an old man who seems to know everything about everyone and drops a few hints to help the team out. These characters are some of Dave's earliest character designs, so it is neat to see them introduced here.

Eventually the Futurians discover that an infestation of incredibly powerful giant worms called F'Wyrrn have landed on Earth, consuming everything in their path...heroes included!

As powerful as the Futurians are...the giant worms' power is tenfold. I mean these things are just unstoppable. Avatar is finally able to bring one of them down by beating it into a pulp, but there are hundreds of them.

The team later finds out that the F'Wyrrn are using humans as hosts for implanting their eggs, and all hell breaks loose as the worms attack and begin to kidnap some of the team members...for breeding!

This arc is a lot more fun than the first, as the characters become fleshed out and the story is a bit more entertaining and easier to follow. A dramatic moment occurs when the team tries to find Mosquito's family home, only to find it destroyed by a meteor in the previous arc. This moment brings Mosquito to tears, and the team leaves the area...not realizing that Mosquito's sister is still alive under the rubble!

They eventually discover the worms nest underground, and a morbid discovery is made as several team members have been implanted with eggs!

The kidnapped Futurians are saved, and the origin of the giant worms is discovered after Silkie shares a psychic bond with one of them. The plan is to consume the entire planet, then move on to the next one.

The military decides to just drop an A-bomb on the worms, which is just going to annihilate whatever was left of Manhattan. Mosquito's sister Sylvie finally escapes the rubble, thankful to be alive...only to find a nuclear bomb about to drop from overhead. Sylvie screams in terror as the nuclear blast envelopes her skeleton, and issue #3 comes to an end.

In 1986, before issue #4 saw the light of day, Lodestone Publications would go out of business after several major distributors failed to pay sizeable past-due invoices. The Futurians were kaput. But luckily fans would get one more final glimpse into Cockrum's creation as issue #4 would later appear in The Futurians Graphic Novel #2, published by Eternity Comics in 1987.

Issue #4 continues as the A-bomb is dropped, but fails to kill off the F'Wyrrn. They just grew bigger! As the battle rages on, Werehawk endures a furthur metamorphosis of sorts as he evolves into a giant griffon, which the team end up having to take down.

Chaos in full effect, Vandervecken makes an emergency call to Sunswift for help. He also gives the team a stockade of Molecular Scrambler guns which seem to help take a few worms down.

Sunswift enters the battle only to succumb to the powerful force of the molecular scrambler guns, resulting in a huge explosion. Critically injured, Sunswift must return to her daystar  to survive. She rushes out into space and falls unconsious as her body just barely makes it into the Sun. Filled with Solar Wrath, Sunswift blazes out of the Sun and conjures a mighty vortex that sucks the entire island of Manhattan into space, dropping them on Jupiter.

And that was it for the Futurians. Aardwolf re-published issue #4 (as #0) in B&W in 1995, to test the waters for a possible new series, but that never came to light. It was in this issue that Dave pondered his mistake in signing on with Lodestone:

"Unfortunately, I let myself be lured away from Marvel and did the series for an independent publisher who promised pie-in-the-sky money. If I'd stayed with Marvel, we might be publishing Futurians #250 or something by now. Instead, I went with the independent, occasionally called Lodestone Publications, and my run only lasted three issues."

Dave Cockrum passed away in 2006 due to complications with diabetes. In 2010, Dave Miller released Avatar, a three issue mini-series featuring the Futurians. I have yet to read it. If you can get your hands on The Futurians Graphic Novel #2, I would highly recommend it.

In closing, the Futurians have become something of an enigma to me. The fact that these characters are very much like the X-Men has me wondering just how inspired Dave had become after his run on Uncanny in the 70's. Did he invision Phoenix evolving into a being such as Sunswift? Did he see Colossus as more of a leader type of character, as Avatar was? Did Wolverine annoy him, much like the wisecracks of Blackmane? Or did he see Werehawk as an extension of what Thunderbird could have become? So many questions we'll likely never know.

One thing is for certain -- The Futurians were clearly Dave Cockrum's love letter to the Uncanny X-Men. And that is something that shouldn't be as easily as forgotten.