by Damon Martin
After a stunning debut that drew in over 5 million viewers last week, AMC’s new series The Walking Dead has been picked up for a second season with a 13 episode run already approved by the network. Indeed, the zombie filled show, based on Robert Kirkman’s comics of the same name, has broken cable records for viewership among adults 18-49.
Now that The Walking Dead can be called a legitimate hit, television networks will likely mine the comic book world vein, looking for more material that can be turned into TV gold. Shows like NBC’s Heroes and ABC’s No Ordinary Family have drawn upon the superhero myth, but weren’t actually based on any established work. So as The Walking Dead continues on AMC, let’s take a look at five series comic book series that have the potential to make it big in TV land.
1. Y The Last Man
The number one choice for a comic book to be brought to life on the small screen has to be Brian K. Vaughan’s work on the Vertigo title Y The Last Man. Now many people are going to immediately point to the fact that the comic has already been optioned as a movie, with Transformers star Shia LeBeouf rumored to play the lead character, Yorick Brown. But the film has been put on hold several times, and right now is in limbo, which might provide the perfect opening for TV peeps to snap this series up.
The story focuses around Brown and his pet monkey Ampersand, who, after a plague wipes out almost every male on the planet, are the last known male species on Earth. With the human species in jeopardy, Brown goes in search of his missing girlfriend. A mixture of great story and well-timed comedic moments make this the perfect scenario for television.
2. Scalped
Imagine the film Donnie Brasco set on a Native American Indian Reservation. That’s probably the simplest way to describe Jason Aaron’s work on the Vertigo title Scalped. A brilliant comic that follows the life of Dashiell Bad Horse, a full-blooded Oglala Indian, who left his home when he was 13-years old and returns as an undercover FBI agent working to bring down Chief Lincoln Red Crow, the dirty head of the tribe who works as a mob boss as well as the leader of the community.
The story’s gritty nature and realism, set in the Native American world that is rarely touched on in American popular culture, make it a great choice for TV. Tony Soprano would be in awe of some of the wicked things Chief Red Crow does, while Bad Horse is as compelling a character as written in fiction over the last 20 years. And since the work that Aaron does on this title reads best in graphic novel form, as the stories develop and reveal themselves over multiple issues, the inbuilt structure would provide some great cliffhangers to keep TV viewers hooked.
3. Planetary
Warren Ellis’ 27-issue story, which was ultimately bound as a book, took nearly a decade to complete. A sprawling epic that mirrors the work of famed comic scribes like Alan Moore, it’s a tour de force of comic genius.
The series follows a field team of agents sent out to investigate the supernatural. The action features monsters, mythological figures and super powered humans, and has a splash of pop culture thrown in on nearly every page. The team is charged with investigating what exactly led to the creation of the superhero mythos, and cross paths with classic characters like Dracula and Frankenstein during the course of their enquiries.
While super powered individuals are involved in the story telling, what really comes across in the comics is Ellis’ ability to tell the story in a way that blends noir and current culture in one seamless tale. On the small screen, if done right, Planetary could be CSI meets X-Files. While set as a miniseries in comic book form, Ellis has done enough work to create a few seasons of television based on his masterful opus.
4. DMZ
DMZ is a series based in a future where the United States has been thrust into a second Civil War, with renegade militia rebelling against the establishment. The result is a warn-torn New York City, that, beyond saving, has become a demilitarized zone. Matty Roth, a young photojournalist, gets the chance of a lifetime to go into the DMZ to follow a group of journalists as they document everything going on inside the metropolis.
What he doesn’t expect is for his group to be assassinated in an ambush. Only Roth is spared after the carnage ensues. Instead of getting out of Dodge, Roth decides to do the responsible thing and report on the hell on Earth that has been unleashed in the Big Apple since the war started.
This metaphor-ridden political tale has very real themes that would seemingly translate beautifully into a television series – and would be especially poignant given the state of the world today.
5. The Unwritten
The series created by Mike Carey follows the adventures of Tom Taylor, who, as a young boy, was the inspiration for a series of books written by his father which are similar in style to the Harry Potter novels. Tom’s father mysteriously disappears however, and he is left to deal with the responsibility of his father legacy and the infamy of being the real person behind the beloved protagonist in the books.
What Tom doesn’t konw is that his father’s fictional work bled into the real world, and he’s soon confronted with the reality of being hunted by a secretive group of villains hell bent on finding the boy-wizard of the novels. As Tom attempts to find out what exactly his dad was up to when writing the novels based on his youth, he travels around the world to the sites where the fiction intersected with reality.
The series is a fantasy ride that crosses over multiple dimensions and brings a children’s story to life with adult themes. A very solid series in comic form, it would make for very an interesting show for television.
[…] revolves around his central work on the ongoing series Scalped (which I also picked as one of the top five comics that deserve a shot on TV). The book, centered around an undercover agent trying to infiltrate a drug riddled Indian […]