Matt Fraction, Howard Chaykin Team for Satellite Sam This Summer

Acclaimed comic book creators Matt Fraction and Howard Chaykin are preparing a new series for Image that will take readers back to the Golden Age of Television, a time when innocence was as manufactured a fiction as the perfect families in the comedies that captivated audiences at home.

Satellite Sam, debuting in July, takes a look at the darkness behind the small screen when, in 1951 Carlyle Bishop, the star of the beloved serial "Satellite Sam," turns up dead in a filthy flophouse. Carlyle's son Michael has a hunch that his father's death was anything but natural, but the only clue is a box full of photographs of women in various states of undress — and Mike can't bring himself to stay sober long enough to make any sense of it.

"It's a detective story, a history of television, and a record of addiction, sex, and depravity during a time when the antiseptic shine off Ozzie and Harriet obscure what was really happening in the world," said writer Fraction. "And these are just a few of the many joys that come from telling a story about television while it was being invented as a mass medium in New York City."

The series--a black-and-white ongoing--required a good deal of research and prep time, according to the publisher.

"We'd been talking about Satellite Sam for a while, but what really got it going was a long Winter's day Matt and I spent wandering New York, feeling the city's ghosts, its lost and found architecture, ending up at the Paley Center, where we watched kinescopes of long dead men and women, acting out children's fantasies, while living complex lives off-camera," said Chaykin. "To say that I'm both having the time of my life collaborating on this project, and getting my ass kicked in the process, is to grossly understate the case."