Jonni Future

[close] Jonni Future is a fictional comic book heroine, who appeared in the pages of Tom Strong's Terrific Tales, a series published under writer Alan Moore's America's Best Comics line of comic books for Wildstorm Comics. The stories were written by Steve Moore (no relation) and most of them were illustrated by Art Adams.

Jonni's uncle came and went at his pleasure from the 20th century to the Crepusculum, a time billions of years in the future when the whole solar system teeters on the brink of collapse and several planets have already disintegrated in a maelstrom of asteroids. He made these journeys via a portal located in his home.

After his death, he leaves his home to his ethnobotanist niece, Jonni. She inherits the house, she learns, on the condition that she keep it, and resell it to no one. In her first night in the house , she finds her uncle's old magazines and starts reading about his fanciful exploits. Jonni encounters Jermaal Van Pavane, an anthropomorphic cheetah, who crossed from the pulp universe via a dimensional bridge in the attic. He brings her back to her uncle's old lair, explains to her the truth about him. Jermaal becomes her sidekick in the campy action, explaining that her uncle wished her to take up his mantle as a hero and protector of the Grand Array, the fantastic universe he lost his life defending. His legacy to Jonni includes trappings like the fish-shaped spaceship Coelacanth, a war suit and a "universal translator" helmet that enable Jonni to communicate with Jermaal and other aliens.

Jonni Future's character and stories are an amalgamation of classic science fiction characters like Adam Strange and Barbarella.

The plots are deliberate homages to pulp science fiction pulp magazines, due to the revelation that her uncle Johnny Future often returned to 20th century Earth and wrote up his adventures as pulp fiction in a magazine named Startling Stories (a reference to the real-life magazine Amazing Stories). The result is that many of the characters and situations that are considered outlandish and silly by the heroine are actually real-life occurrences in the Crepusculum.

Despite the well-endowed character's incredulity at the idea that her uncle intended her to wear the revealing costume that she wears in the series, Jonni nonetheless accepts her role as an adventurer, with much of the plots centering on or making mention of her attractive nature, or barely clothed damsels in distress in general.