There are only three comic book series that are any good. The best are Hellboy up until Mignola stopped doing the art and the original TMNT by Eastman and Laird up to and including the “City War” story.
Russ Manning’s Magnus, Robot Fighter 4000 A.D. is in that rarefied air. Written back during the 60s, it was intended as a futuristic Tarzan. It’s way better than the Marvel and DC books of that era.
Magnus is a Luddite with superhuman strength in a fantastically futuristic world where robots do all of man’s drudge work. He relentlessly preaches that by doing so they will make mankind weak and lazy and lead to human extinction.
But the series is full of marvelous paradoxes in addition to the high flying action. Because Magnus has a chip implanted in his skull that allows him to “hear” robot transmissions, Magnus is actually a cyborg. It is a robot that raises Magnus and gives him his powers. Whenever evil robots rise up to destroy mankind, there’s almost always a human hiding in the shadows pulling their strings.
Overall there is a very progressive and positive futurist tone to the books. Sure the future is complex and challenging. But it is also awesome.
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