When FOX announced its winter schedule last week, one of its new shows was Human Target, an action/drama series based on a character from DC comics. Meanwhile, AMC -- which has had an amazing track record with Breaking Bad and Mad Men -- is adapting another comic book series, Robert Kirkman's addictive life-after-zombies book The Walking Dead.
Visit a comic shop these days and you'll see plenty of titles based on the world of TV, from Joss Whedon's continuation of Buffy the Vampire Slayer to (really) Oprah Winfrey. But going from comics to TV? Doesn't happen very often, at least not that successfully. (Smallville, now in its 45th season, is an exception. And it's based on a well-established character.)
It's too bad, because there are quite a few titles that have come out in the last few years that would make for great TV series. Here's a look at just five of them:
1. Chew, by Rob Layman and John Guillory
Lazy, unimaginative pitch: "It's like Pushing Daisies, only much darker!"
What it's really about? Tony Chu is an investigator for the FDA with a unique skill: he's a "cibopath," meaning he can see the history of anything he tastes. This ability throws Chu into a bizarre series of cases involving other planets, a government conspriacy, and a food critic whose words are so powerful she can make readers salivate or vomit, depending on how she liked her meal. Like Flashforward, it has a premise that grabs you right away. Unlike Flashforward, it has characters that you want to follow. (And Flashforward's John Cho would make a great Tony Chu.)
2. Scalped, by Jason Aaron and R.M. Guera
Lazy, unimaginative pitch: "It's like The Sopranos, but on an Indian Reservation!"
What it's really about: Dash Bad Horse is a tribal cop at the Prarie Rose Reservation in South Dakota. He'd left there years earlier, and returns to find "the rez" is now home to a new casino, run by activist turned crime-boss Lincoln Red Crow. It's dark, dark stuff; Dash and Red Crow's world is one of poverty, addiction, racism and self-hatred. It's as bleak as something like Chew is fun, but never short of fascinating.
3. Ex Machina, by Brian K. Vaughn and Tony Harris
Lazy, unimaginative pitch: "It's like the West Wing with superheroes!"
What it's really about: What if a superhero became mayor of New York City? That's what happens to Mitchell Hundred, who made a name for himself as "The Great Machine," saving the Big Apple with his power to communicate with machines. Just as The Walking Dead makes life after zombies far more interesting than zombies themselves, Ex Machina makes the headaches of running NYC as compelling as Mitchell's previous costumed adventures.
4. Sandman Mystery Theatre by Matt Wagner, Steven Seagle, various artists
Lazy, unimaginative pitch: "It's like Criminal Minds, only a bit classier and in the '30s!"
What it's really about: New York City in the 1930s was awash with all sorts of masked psychopaths, according to writers Wagner and Seagle. It's up to Wesley Dodds -- think a doughier version of Bruce Wayne -- to stop them. Written around the same time as Neil Gaiman's more famous Sandman comic book, SMT followed the adventures of the original character, a bookish millionaire who solved murders while wearing a gas mask. It's a creepy, stylish, suspenseful piece of work, although the production values and setting would probably make it more suited to HBO (or PBS) than the networks.
5. 100 Bullets by Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Risso
Lazy, unimaginative pitch: "It's like The Wire and Lost, for people who thought those shows were too easy to keep track of!"
What it's really about: 100 Bullets started off sounding kind of gimmicky. A mysterious man named Agent Graves gives people a chance to commit murder and get away with it. But by the time it finished its final issue earlier this year, Azzarello and Risso had created one of the most complicated plotlines in comics' history, with dozens of characters in stories that jumped from Chicago to Juarez to Paris to Atlantic City to Miami. And what seemed like a gimmick at the start turned out to be just a small piece of the puzzle, as we learned Graves was part of a group of men dedicated to policing the 13 families that secretly controlled the United States. Pulling this one off would be tricky, but viewers -- patient ones, anyway -- would be rewarded.
Tom Coombe
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