Plenty of TV shows are canceled prematurely. It's just the nature of the business. If fans are lucky, as in the case of Futurama or Arrested Development, a canceled series will find new life on another network or through a new distribution method. But it's also become common practice in recent years for canceled TV shows to live on as comic books.
Dark Horse continues Joss Whedon's Buffy saga in the form of Buffy the Vampire Slayer Seasons 8 and 9 and the spinoff series Angel & Faith. DC explores what happens after the Smallville series finale with the weekly digital comic Smallville: Season 11. And most recently, Agents Mulder and Scully returned to action with IDW Publishing's The X-Files: Season 10.
But if you think the comic book sequel treatment is only suited to geek-friendly genre series from the '90s and 2000's, NBC is intent on proving you wrong. Today they announced that they're bringing no less than five classic TV shows back to life as comic books. These comics will be produced and published by Lion Forge and released digitally. The initial lineup includes:
- Airwolf
- Knight Rider
- Miami Vice
- Punky Brewster
- Saved by the Bell
Specific creative teams for each series haven't been revealed yet. Writers involved include Joelle Sellner (Teen Titans), Jonathan London (Geekscape), Geoffrey Thorne (Ben 10) and David Gorden (Catalyst Prime). Artists involved include Jason Johnson (Wetworks) and current Lion Forge artists Carl Reed and Lorenzo Lizana.
"From hugely popular characters such as Crockett and Tubbs, Zack Morris and Punky Brewster to highly stylized music and clothing choices, these TV franchises have had a significant impact on pop culture," said Lion Forge CEO David Steward in NBC's press release. "We here at Lion Forge are looking forward to extending that influence by creating visually appealing and entertaining experiences on mobile devices for a whole new generation of fans."
"Partnering with the team at Lion Forge to bring classic TV properties to life in graphic novel format was a natural step for us as we continue to identify new ways to entertain our fans in the digital space," said Chris Lucero, director of Global Consumer Products Licensing for NBCUniversal Television. "We're excited to give fans a chance to revisit some of their favorite shows and characters in a completely new way."
It's not clear yet whether these comics will continue where their respective shows left off or tell stories set during their original runs. In some cases the question is fairly meaningless anyway. Miami Vice didn't exactly possess the sort of complex, ever-changing mythology of Buffy or X-Files. However, we're guessing the Airwolf comic will choose to ignore the controversial fourth season that saw most of the original cast written out.
Lion Forge is projecting a release date in the latter half of 2013 for all five series. The comics will be sold through Amazon's Kindle bookstore, Apple's iBooks store, Barnes & Noble's Nook Book store, and Kobo's digital storefront.
Lion Forge will be revealing more about these projects at their SDCC panel later this month (scheduled for 6:30pm PST on July 20 in Room 26AB). We'll update you on what we learn then. For now, let us know what you think about this announcement and the thought of new adventures for Crockett and Tubbs, Michael and KITT, and the Saved by the Bell gang.
Jesse is a writer for various IGN channels. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter, or Kicksplode on MyIGN.
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