Mad Max: Everything Wrong With Furiosa’s Comic Backstory

Fans may have loved Mad Max: Fury Road heroine Furiosa, but her tie-in comic backstory earned a lot of critical backlash—and for good reason. Much of what made Mad Max: Fury Road so refreshing for viewers upon its 2015 release was the lack of ponderous world-building. Viewers interested in franchise lore could find out why Fury Road’s War Boys spray chrome, but the Mad Max movie only gave viewers the bare minimum plot necessary to enjoy the thrilling ride.

However, some fans understandably wanted to know more about the characters introduced in Fury Road. Fortunately for them, there was a four-part series of Mad Max: Fury Road tie-in comics released by Vertigo to coincide with the movie. Unfortunately for franchise fans, these comics did very little to illuminate the backstory of the film’s fan-favorite antiheroine, Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron).

Furiosa, alongside Max himself, War Boy Nux, and villain Immortan Joe, were intended to receive a fleshed-out backstory in one issue of the tie-in comics. However, not only was her story never actually outlined by Furiosa’s issue but there was more to dislike than like about the comic. While Immortan Joe’s Fury Road issue explored ideas from Lord Humungus’ cut Road Warrior backstory, the more popular Furiosa issue was mostly a parade of horrific assault scenes that few viewers wanted to see, and failed to even explain Furiosa’s life before she arrived in the Citadel.

Furiosa’s Backstory Is Never Really Addressed

While Immortan Joe and Nux’s backstories date all the way back to pre-apocalypse life and childhood respectively, Furiosa’s backstory begins when she is already an Imperator working for the warlord. With no idea where she came from or how she ended up employed in the Citadel, viewers leave the comic knowing little more about Furiosa’s backstory than before. Fortunately, this means that the upcoming Furiosa spinoff movie will be able to come up with a wholly original backstory for the character and will not need to rely on the canon established by the tie-in comics. This is doubly fortunate because the little plotting that is present in the Fury Road comics portrays a part of the movie’s story that was not of interest to many Mad Max fans.

Furiosa’s Comic Is Gratuitous Where Fury Road Wasn’t

When it comes to bone-crunching violence, the Mad Max movies have never pulled any punches, but the franchise is a fast-paced action extravaganza rather than a dark and serious drama series. As such, the movies have never dwelled on sensitive territory like the topic of sexual assault, which is heavily implied but never portrayed in Fury Road. Fury Road villain Immortan Joe refers to his captives as his wives and demands that they are returned to him so he can sire more offspring, so it does not take much deduction for viewers to work out that the character is likely a serial rapist. However, in the tie-in comics, this is repeatedly explicitly depicted, adding nothing to Immortan Joe and Furiosa’s characters but making for a deeply unpleasant reading experience.

Why Max’s Comic Backstory Worked

Max’s tie-in comic backstory also only portrays the events shortly before Fury Road, rather than dating back to the pre-apocalypse. However, viewers can find out the rest of Max’s canon origin story from the earlier Mad Max movies, meaning his comic only needs to set up his emotional connection to saving Immortan Joe’s captives. When Max fails to save the life of a mother and daughter from a band of marauding villains, he gains the motivation to help Furiosa and company take down Immortan Joe. However, the question of who Max is and where he comes from was clear before the tie-in comic began, thanks to the action of Mad Max and The Road Warrior. In contrast, Furiosa’s canon story is limited to Fury Road and her tie-in comic—which revels in Immortan Joe’s awful misdeeds instead of illustrating anything new about her character.

Some of Furiosa’s character details should be kept a mystery. For example, the choice not to explain Furiosa’s missing arm in Fury Road is an ingenious decision that ensures the character is never defined by her disability. However, the tie-in comic claimed to offer a backstory for its characters and provided one for the only other Fury Road characters featured in the series (Immortan Joe and Nux). As such, it is understandable that fans were angered by the lack of a story for Furiosa.

How Furiosa’s Spinoff Movie Can Fix Her Backstory

Furiosa’s upcoming movie spinoff promises to properly explain her backstory and, as noted above, will have a blank slate to work from thanks to the lack of compelling explanation of her origins in the existing canon. However, the casting of Last Night In Soho star Anya Taylor-Joy as Furiosa is further good news for the series, as Taylor-Joy’s experience playing sympathetic villains could assist her in humanizing the character. Although Furiosa becomes a hero during the story of Fury Road, she opens the movie as an accomplice to Immortan Joe’s crimes and a compelling backstory for Furiosa would need to depict the hardships that made her align with such a monstrous figure.

Part of what made Furiosa’s comic backstory so disappointing for fans of Fury Road was the fact that the movie never gave viewers a chance to understand how the character came to work with the villain, as the action picks up once she is turning her back on Immortan Joe. From there on out, it is Furiosa and Mad Max’s (Tom Hardy) attempts to first escape and later overthrow the villain that makes up the movie’s story, meaning Fury Road never delves into the psychology of Furiosa’s character as the taut plot never has a moment to breathe. This is exactly what the tie-in comics offered the creators of Fury Road and precisely why the issue felt like a failure for many fans, but luckily, the upcoming Mad Max spinoff movie can rectify this issue by explaining Furiosa’s turn to the dark side through her experience of life in the franchise’s brutal, often hopeless wasteland setting.

About The Author

Cathal Gunning
(1473 Articles Published)

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Cathal Gunning has been writing about movies and TV online since 2020. His obsessions include The Simpsons, Stephen King, the Scream series, and the horror genre in general. He has spent more time thinking about Stranger Things than the writers of Stranger Things, and he has never seen a Star War.

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