Dark Horse Comics announced today that they have acquired the license to publish comics based on the Bill & Ted movies from Orion Pictures, and that their first comic book tie-in, launching in September with Bill & Ted Are Doomed, a four-issue prequel to August’s Bill & Ted Face the Music. The comic will set the stage for the film, in which a middle-aged Bill S. Preston and Ted “Theodore” Logan are desperately trying to figure out how they can write a song that will change the world, as they’ve been told since they were teenagers that they would. And it’s taking a toll.
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The comic will be co-written by Ed Solomon, one of the movie’s writers, and Evan Dorkin, who wrote and drew the Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey movie adaptation for Marvel Comics in the ’90s and then Bill & Ted’s Excellent Comic Book, which spun out of it. Art will be provided by The Muppet Show‘s Roger Langridge.
“My first full-time job in comics was adapting Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey in 1991,” Dorkin, who has become a staple in the industry and an Eisner winner in the years since, said in Dark Horse’s announcement (via Newsarama). “Now, in 2020, I’m writing a sequel — that’s also a prequel — with the input and blessing of Ed Solomon, and the artwork of Roger Langridge, one of my all-time favorite cartoonists. It’s been a total blast to work on, and I truly hope the fans have a most excellent time reading it.”
No word yet on whether Dorkin has finally sat down to watch Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure — something he had not done yet when BOOM! reissued his Marvel series in a hardcover edition back in 2015. But things change in five years. Heck — even Death (played in the movies by William Sadler) now has skin on his face in the comics, like he does in the movies!
Here’s the official solicitation text:
After defeating the evil dictator De Nomolos in Bogus Journey in 1995, things aren’t looking as excellent as they should for either Bill and Ted or Wyld Stallyns. There’s tension in the band and worry at home. Bill and Ted’s obsessiveness with writing the one song to bring peace to the world is affecting their playing and their relationships with their families. The band is losing favor with fans and the future isn’t shaping up as they were all led to believe it would from past (and future) events. Desperate for a solution Bill and Ted burst in to announce their great idea to revive the band’s fortunes: A world tour to spread the love-and the rock, and the love of the rock-to the world.
Bill & Ted Are Doomed #1 is scheduled for release on September 9.
