Futura #3
Futura #3 is an early chapter in Éditions Lug's ambitious mid-1970s experiment in home-grown French science-fiction comics — a deliberate attempt by publisher Marcel Navarro to prove that Lyon could generate its own superhero mythology, not merely translate American ones. As the third issue of the series, it continued the simultaneous serialization of three distinct SF properties — Jaleb le Télépathe, Homicron, and Brigade Temporelle — a multi-strand anthology structure unusual for the French petit-format market of the era. Issue #3 also marks the debut of Italian artist Paolo Morisi on the Homicron strip, replacing Lina Buffolente; the characters born in this run would survive Lug's eventual closure and be revived decades later under the Hexagon Comics banner, giving them an unusually long afterlife in French popular culture.
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Futura launched in August 1972 as part of Éditions Lug's parallel strategy of simultaneously publishing translated Marvel Comics (in Strange) and cultivating entirely original French SF characters. The series was conceived and largely scripted by Claude-Jacques Legrand, Lug's principal scenariste of the period, with art contributed by a Franco-Italian stable of collaborators. Issue #3's cover, unlike the debut issue (Jean-Yves Mitton) or the even-numbered run (Jean Frisano), was produced by an Italian studio — a sourcing pattern documented across the series. The issue carried a legal deposit date of October 1972, placing it in the magazine's inaugural quarter, and was later bundled with issues #1 and #2 into the first collected Futura album.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Published by Éditions Lug, Lyon; legal deposit October 1972; petit format (13×18 cm), black-and-white, 127 pages.
- Part of a 33-issue run (August 1972 – April 1975) devoted exclusively to original French science-fiction content — no licensed or translated strips, save for occasional filler pages from the Italian humor strip Malefik.
- Contains three serialized stories: 'Chantages' (Jaleb le Télépathe, script Legrand, art Annibale Casabianca); 'Au bord de la catastrophe' (Homicron, art Paolo Morisi); and 'Mister B' (Brigade Temporelle, script Legrand, art Edmond Ripoll).
- Issue #3 is the first Homicron installment drawn by Paolo Morisi, who took over the strip from Lina Buffolente after issues #1–2.
- The cover was produced by an Italian studio — not by Jean-Yves Mitton (issue #1) or Jean Frisano (even-numbered issues #2–20), following the documented cover-sourcing rotation for the series.
- Issues #1 through #3 were subsequently collected into Futura Album N°1 (also dated October 1972), making this one of three issues preserved in that first bound volume.
- The Futura characters — including Jaleb, Homicron, and the Brigade Temporelle — were later revived by Jean-Marc Lofficier for Semic and are now part of the Hexagon Comics catalog, extending their publishing life well into the 21st century.
- Éditions Lug had been publishing French-language Tex Willer (from Sergio Bonelli Editore) in a separate, dedicated title since 1952; Tex Willer does not appear in the Futura series, which was restricted to original SF creations.