Futuristic Comic Strips, Cartoons and Anime

Sometimes things that can't be expressed otherwise end up working perfectly in the framework of animation. Sometimes animation's just plain weird. Whatever you like, this is the place for futuristic animation.

Exosquad

Aired: 1993 - 1995
Show Type: Animated
Country of Origin: US
Show Summary: In the early 22nd Century, mankind has achieved two great scientific feats: one, the creation of the exo-frame, a highly capable machine piloted by humans for work in extreme conditions including outer space, enabling the terraforming of Mars and Venus. Two, the neo-sapien race, a genetically perfect species created solely for labor.

Angered by their subhuman standing in mankind's empire, they were led to uprise by Phaeton. The militarized neo-sapiens soon overthrew humanity's hold on Earth and Mars, with their superior strength and intelligence. Now, cloning experiments are allowing them the possiblity to procreate and further their own species.

Allying with the mercenary space pirate clans that litter the outer colonies, the ExoFleet is poising to retake the solar system and set humanity on a course for peace. Exo-Squad follows this overarching story, as well as the trials of Lt. J.T. Marsh and his squadron of pilots.

(Taken from http://www.retrojunk.com/details_tvshows/507-exo-squad/) 

Complete information on Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exosquad. 

Futurama

From Matt Groening (creator of the Simpsons) this futuristic cartoon series is absolute comedic gold. While working on new years eve 2000, the protagonist Philip J. Fry, a down-on-his-luck pizza boy, gets a crank phone call to deliver pizza to a Mr. I.C. Wiener. He finally gets the joke when he finds himself at an abandoned cryogenics lab.  While walking around, he trips and wangs his head on an empty freezing chamber, and falls into it. He would be frozen for exactly one thousand years before being revived.

Bender, Fry and Leila are trapped by the insane Santa robot

When he awakens, he finds himself in the year 3000 in "New New York," built overtop of old New York, which now serves as a sewer. The world is filled with strange aliens, and intelligent robots that require alcohol to remain stable. Fry finds himself falling in with Planet Express, an interplanetary delivery service with a cast full of wacky characters, including a cigar-smoking, womanizing, foulmouthed alcoholic robot named Bender, who instantly becomes Fry's best friend.

Spaceman Spiff

I have to dedicate the first entry in this field to Bill Watterson's "Spaceman Spiff". I am a huge fan of "Calvin and Hobbes" and always loved Calvin's alien-thwarting alter ego. It is a great example of futurism as a means of escapism.  

He's the lone space explorer, Spaceman Spiff. Calvin, as Spiff, tackles monsters from other planets in galactic battles or with his death ray blaster; he crashes his red flying saucer and is often taken prisoner... In fact the Spaceman Spiff character was created before Calvin and goes back to Watterson's college dates. The narration of these strips is much like that of the Flash Gordon cartoons. Indeed the story of Flash is largely told in inserts, which is why Spiff describes all his actions as they take place.

(Taken from http://calvinethobbes.free.fr/english/c_pers.html )

I highly recommend Watterson's comics as a whole, I own nearly all of them myself.

http://members.shaw.ca/adamhighstead/subjects.html is a great page that has almost every Calvin and Hobbes strip, separated into categories.