Five Comic Books That Should Be Brought Back, Veronica Mars-Style

Sometimes, things end before they really should. In the case of comics, the creators often try to give as satisfactory an ending as possible but since many of the characters are meant to go on and on, it's difficult to give anybody a happily-ever-after, and sometimes what comes next can totally screw them up. For that reason, what's really heartbreaking is when a creator who's truly at the top of his game working on a property that's as good as anything he's ever done is shunted off the book, or has it cancelled. So, with the Veronica Mars Kickstarter getting everybody thinking about what shows they'd like to bring back as movies, we decided to think about some of the comic books we'd like to bring back as original graphic novels.

BoneyardBoneyard wasn't a traditional comic book series as much as it was a series of short graphic novels by Richard Moore to begin with, so it probably would work more easily and with fewer adjustments than most of the rest of the books on this list. A horror/comedy comic, the series begins with Michael Paris, an ordinary young man who has inherited a large plot of land upon his grandfather's death. The land is located in a town called "Raven's Hollow", and while Michael, or Paris as he prefers to be called, thinks he's just going to pick up the check for the land, he finds that the land is actually the town graveyard, called "The Boneyard". It's also not empty of active occupants, as a number of mythological creatures inhabit it.

Manhunter Marc Andreyko's take on the Manhunter mythology, which owed a lot to James Robinson's Starman in the way it created a kind of community around the various mostly-unrelated heroes who used the name, was an absolute gem for the first 25 issues of its run. After its initial cancellation, it was brought back and cancelled a few times, and you could watch and wince as Andreyko was forced to jump through DC's corporate hoops to keep the book alive, featuring seemingly random guest stars and dropping a storyline completely as the book was hijacked by editorial. That's what we'd like to see--the story that Andreyko teased about a supervillain who targets abortion clinics. It would be in keeping with the real-world tone of the series and the details of the story, while scarce, have always sounded good when they dripped out in interviews. And if it were a closed-ended thing with minimal risk, we could get Andreyko and Jesus Saiz back together to make the story feel like a seamless continuation of their initial run. The Elementals (Contributed by Troy Brownfield, with whom I was talking about this issue) But if and only if Bill Willingham at least showran it. I know that he's commented that he used at least thematic elements from his original ending with what he with Pantheon, and I'd guess that he might not have much interest in writing it himself, but the fact that it never got the proper ending was a big disappointment to me. Of course, I know there are rights issues and so forth, but this perfect world conjecture, so there you go.

The Life and Times of Savior 28 By J.M. DeMatteis and Mike Cavallaro, The Life and Times of Savior 28 was one of the best superhero stories of the last ten years--and somewhat predictably, sales didn't reflect it. The six-issue IDW miniseries was contracted to five, and at the end of that one story (which, admittedly, was all DeMatteis and Cavallaro had wanted but still barely scratched the surface of the elaborate world-building they did in the title), the characters were mothballed. Based on a concept that DeMatteis began percolating when he worked on Captain America in the 1980s, it took nearly 30 years to see the story through to completion--and of course DeMatteis, should he have all the money and rights he could ever want, still has Abadazad to finish--but I'm hoping against hope it'll be less than another 20 years before we get more S28. The Irredeemable Ant-Man Before Robert Kirkman was the most famous face in modern comics, he was the guy who wrote stuff like Marvel Zombies and The Irredeemable Ant-Man. And that's a good thing--Irredeemable Ant-Man was one of the cleverest, funniest books I've read in years, and featured a truly original take on the property, the powers...and a new character who was actually interesting enough to keep his own fans after he stopped being the lead of his own book, which is about the rarest thing in the modern superhero universe.