Review: The Art of Futurama

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Books on Matt Groening’s creative processes are not that common. This is a guy who is like The Beatles of adult animation with all four quadrants of the band mixed into one guy. Having given us series like Disenchantment, The Simpsons, and Futurama with those last two franchises having survived longer than most marriages, there’s little arguing that Matt is one of the most affluent artists of our time. In 2009, Futurama returned for three more seasons before it was canceled in 2013. Hulu revived the series again in 2022 for its eight season, and additional seasons have been greenlit. The show has won six Emmys and nine Annie awards and inspired numerous comic books and games. To get a book that dives THIS deep into this show’s history is really a sight to behold.

The near-180 page book The Art of Futurama thankfully does away with the confusing number of seasons this show has (it’s either nine if your counting just seasons, but Disney has been including the movies as additional seasons so it gets a bit washy) and instead focuses on the number of years this show has been on the air…in this case 25. And there’s a LOT covered here. From early notes and scratchings of Matt figuring out the character designs for some of the show’s biggest stars to early etchings of the backgrounds and models used in the show to this day, the amount of depth The Art of Futurama entails is absolutely mind-blowing and a can’t miss for Futurama fans. Heck, even non-Futurama fans that want to learn how to draw are going to appreciate all of the meticulous stencils that go into making one of the most detailed shows ever conceived.

What The Art of Futurama also features is a lot of insight from the people behind-the-scenes. Featuring commentary from showrunner David X. Cohen, Producer Claudia Katz, and Groening, The Art of Futurama will showcase the never-before-seen concept art and developmental work that brought Futurama to life. Additional commentaries comes from as well as from the show’s writers, animators, and voice actors which makes this book not just a great book for artists, but also producers of all walks of life to get insight from the professionals in a number of levels that can be useful to all sorts of creatives.

The MSRP for this here book is $35 and, for my money, is one of the better steals considering most books of this ilk start from $60 and go much higher. This truly makes The Art of Futurama one of the steals of the year.

Synopsis:

The series follows Philip J. Fry (voiced by Billy West), a slacker who was cryogenically frozen for 1,000 years. He wakes in 30th century New York and begins working as an interplanetary delivery man alongside his boss, the mad scientist Professor Farnsworth(John DiMaggio), his one-eyed girlfriend Turanga Leela (Katy Sagal), and his robot best friend Bender (DiMaggio).