​For the long years between the end of the series and the beginning of the direct-to-DVD movie releases, the Futurama comic was all fans had in the way of new stories. It's hard for a comic to be any meaningful substitute for the show it's based on, but the Futurama comic pulled it off on a regular basis. The best issues are just as smart, funny, and (slightly) moving as the best episodes of the TV show.

As I type this, the TV show's writers and artists are at work on a new season of Futurama episodes set to debut on Comedy Central in 2010. Perhaps they've already written up all the scripts they need, but perhaps not! And if that's the case, then I'd like to suggest Futurama's writers take a look at these ten issues of the Futurama comic book. It couldn't take more than a spit and polish to turn them into excellent episodes for season six.


10) #42: Homeward Boned

Fry didn't revive his fossilized dog Seymour at the end of "Jurassic Bark," instead paving the way for one of the most heart-rending sitcom endings ever. This issue deals with one little-explored consequence of that episode, namely that Fry still has a fossil of a dog he owned a thousand years ago.

Seymour's fossil is stolen by mysterious thieves, prompting a search across the galaxy so Fry can recover it. The alien thieves have some sort of mysterious connection to Seymour and appear to worship his fossil because... well, they're a race of talking alien dogs.
​Fry and company steal Seymour back from the alien dogs and try to retreat to Earth, prompting an invasion. Seymour's fossil begins emitting a high-pitched whine, making it impossible for the Planet Express Ship to shake its canine pursuers.
​Back on Earth, Professor Farnsworth figures out that Seymour's fossil has been inhabited by a genetically altered super-intelligent flea that's acting as part of a vast network of flea sleeper agents. The fleas used tiny radio sets to emit signals that would control the behavior of their canine hosts. Professor Farnsworth created them, of course.

9) #31: As the Wormhole Turns

Nibbler's got a bad case of worms. Since he's a weird space pet, he gets weird space worms that create quantum tunnels through spacetime. Shortly, the Planet Express building is thronged with wormholes leading to far-distant corners of the universe.

The wormholes, of course, cause problems. Immigrants begin flooding into Earth, resulting in a lucrative stream of bribes for Bender and Dr. Zoidberg. Invaders soon follow suit, and although Earth is invaded roughly twice a week in Futurama, these aliens still manage to go too far.
​To try and staunch the influx of invading aliens, Fry and Leela encourage more aliens to invade. Then the aliens will realize that Earth would just be a crappy ball of ash after all the fighting was done, right? Unfortunately, the various races involved are perfectly okay with controlling a crappy ball of ash.
​Bender and Zoidberg's illegal immigration operation immediately dries up. It falls to Hermes to solve the problem through sheer bureaucracy: he informs the aliens that they have to fill out paperwork, and lots of it, before their invasions can legally commence. The invaders go home and Earth is saved... until processing is complete, anyway, in about 600 years.

8) #38: Rumble in the Jungle

The Planet Express Ship crash-lands on a jungle planet, scattering the crew. Leela befriends a tribe of jungle nerds who offer to make her their queen in honor of her renowned butt-kicking prowess.
​Fry wanders about the jungle trying not to die and stumbles across Bender's body, completely gutted of its operating parts. Fry drags Bender's corpse around for a bit until he finds some jungle nerds guarding a box of suspiciously familiar robot parts. He fails to steal the parts from the nerds, who raise the alarm.
​Fry retreats and decides to wear Bender's corpse as a suit of armor, using the extra power to demolish the jungle nerds. Leela, who has been out fighting terrifying jungle beasts as the Nerd Queen, has to rush to defend her people from Fry's fists of metallic fury.
​After epic battle, Bender is restored but Leela is tempted to stay behind on the planet of the jungle nerds, who need her. This is neatly averted by Mom buying the planet so she can clear-cut the forests. Leela gets her revenge, but by the end of the day she's not the queen of anything.

7) #35: Son of the Sun

This issue is an untold tale of the New Justice Team, exploring one of the adventures implied to have taken place during the montage that occurs during the episode "Less Than Hero."
​Specifically, it concerns the New Justice Team's struggle to defeat the Son of the Sun, the son of a supervillain called The Human Sun. The New Justice Team easily defeated the Human Sun in one of their first adventures, embittering his son who'd been raised to embrace a life of super-villainy. If the New Justice Team can't beat the Son of the Sun in time, his ring of five miniature suns will destroy the Earth.
​
The Son of the Sun soundly defeats the New Justice Team in their first bout. Soon, all of the Earth's lakes have evaporated and the oceans are boiling away. Citizens are forced to shelter displaced fish in their bathrooms, creating serious inconvenience across the globe.
​In time, the New Justice Team defeats the Son of the Sun by pointing out more profitable things you could do with super-powers than become a super-villain. The Son of the Sun opens a bitchin' nightclub in New New York, and everything ends happily... well, except for how the New Justice Team lost their powers forever.

6) #11: The Cure For the Common Clod

Fry's 20th century body has brought the rare, once-extinct common cold into the future. Professor Farnsworth tries to quarantine Fry to prevent the spread of the disease, but he's too late. By the time Fry's in his bubble, it's spread to Leela, whose mutant biology mutates the virus further.
​The new mutant flu unlocks the primal urges in whoever contracts it. By the time the Professor figuresthis out, he also realizes that Leela's mutant cold has probably had time to spread to Amy. Given what Amy's primal urges will most likely turn out to be, she needs to be quarantined with Fry quickly or soon the virus will spread beyond anyone's control.
​Amy is quarantined in time (it turns out her primal urge is to do math), but Fry ends up falling out of his quarantine bubble and falling into the New New York drinking water anyway. Soon the disease has spread all over the city and mucus coughed up by the sick humans is aggregating into a horrible super-germ.

The super-germ ends up only being vulnerable to a super-antibody Leela hacks up once she recovers from the disease. Fry and his friends descend to the sewers to see if they can get all of the other mutants sick enough that they begin producing more antibody mucus.
​After this the two huge blobs of mucus get into a disgusting fight, the city is saved, and the mutants are not thanked in any significant way. Hooray!