You like the TV show. Now you can read the comic.

By Eden Miller

While does seem like every comic is getting made into a movie and/or TV show, the opposite is also becoming more and more true. There have been tie-ins with children’s TV shows for a long time, sure, and Dark Horse was publishing Aliens and Predator comics back in the early ’90s, but that’s nothing like what’s happening today.

If you can’t get enough of Joss Whedon’s works, comics are the way to go. Dark Horse‘s Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 8 is probably the best known TV-show-to-comic out there, but IDW has published Angel: After the Fall, meant to be a “season six” for the show. Dark Horse also has several Firefly/Serenity publications, including the recent one-shot focusing on Wash, Float Out (which was written by comedian Patton Oswalt).

Everyone’s favorite vampire/human/etc. series, True Blood, is due back on the air next week, but to fill in the gaps between shows, the first a six-issue series from IDW will hit stores in July with art by David Messina.

(IDW actually has a big selection of TV-tie-in comics, including CSI and Ghost Whisperer, if you’re interested)

For those of you counting down the days until Torchwood returns, you should be happy to know that Titan Publishing will debut a new comic series in August. Torchwood has appeared in comics before in Titan’s Torchwood magazine, but it’s fun that it’s getting its own series.

The Last Airbender, directed by M. Night Shyamalan, is based on the Nickelodeon series Avatar: The Last Airbender (“Avatar” was dropped because apparently, there was some other movie using that as its title. You may have heard of it) is due in theaters for the Fourth of July weekend. The movie is not without controversy (Gene Luen Yang sums it up nicely in comic form) and Shyamalan’s track record leaves something to be desired, but I don’t think any fault can be found with the “prequel” Zuko’s Story, written by Dave Roman and Alison Wilgus with art by Nina Matsumoto.

TRON: Legacy isn’t out until Christmas, but a prequel graphic novel, written by Fabian Nicieza and with art by Andie Tong is due out Oct. 19.

There seems to be more and more of these series by the day (I’m waiting for the inevitable LOST comic series, personally) but I think the more, the merrier. Whatever gets people reading comics is fine by me.

[Image of Buffy: Season 8 cover from Dark Horse]