Movies And Shows You Didn't Realize Were Based On Comic Books
Turning comic books into movies and TV shows is nothing new, but they're bigger than ever these days. The top 25 highest-grossing films of all time currently includes eight of them, while on the small screen the "Arrowverse" is wrapping up an astonishing 10-plus years on television with the final season of "The Flash" in 2023. But comic book movies and TV shows go far beyond the biggest superheroes, extending to gritty crime dramas, quirky comedies, and supernatural thrillers that don't always make their status as comic book adaptations so readily apparent as "The Avengers" or "Man of Steel."
In fact, over the years there have been comic book adaptations from just about every genre that you probably didn't even know had their origins in the sequential art form. Across sci-fi adventures, horror movies, and beyond, these movie and TV projects turn lesser-known comics and graphic novels into hits big and small, including long-running TV shows and major blockbusters.
Timecop
The early '90s saw a flurry of comic books translated to the screen. But while most studios were focused on adapting colorful superheroes like "Batman" or action comics like "Judge Dredd," Universal Studios looked to a little-known sci-fi adventure from Dark Horse Comics for their next big action blockbuster.
With a screenplay by Mark Verheiden, and directed by Peter Hyams, the 1994 film "Timecop" stars Jean-Claude Van Damme. He plays Max Walker, an agent of the Time Enforcement Commission, a newly formed agency tasked with hunting down illicit time travelers. In the film, Walker uncovers a conspiracy involving a U.S. senator (Ron Silver) who is working with his younger self in the past to rig future events to orchestrate his rise to power. But in attempting to stop the villain's scheme, Walker also has a chance to change a dark moment in his own past.
Adapted from a three-part story in the anthology title "Dark Horse Comics," the original story sees Walker inadvertently changing history after tracking a criminal in 1933 and being forced to correct the damage to the timeline. With a subplot addressing race relations in South Africa, it may have been a little too hot for Hollywood, and Verheiden instead cooked up an entirely different story around the concept of a time-traveling cop.
A History of Violence
It's more than just superheroes and science fiction that pulls from comics, and you might be surprised to learn that the 2005 David Cronenberg action-thriller "A History of Violence" was actually adapted from a comic book of the same name. The graphic novel, written by John Wagner — co-creator of Judge Dredd — centered on Tom McKenna, a small-town cafe owner who becomes the target of New York mobsters. The gangsters arrive after Tom makes the news, believing he's the same man who, along with his brother Richie, attacked their outfit decades before in retaliation for killing their father.
Starring Viggo Mortensen, William Hurt, and Ed Harris, the film adaptation starts out largely the same way, with diner owner Tom Stall (Viggo Mortenson) being confronted by Irish gangsters after making national news when he thwarts a robbery. But things diverge from the original story when we learn that Tom was once a member of their gang in Philadelphia, and the mafia bosses — along with his brother, Richie (Hurt) — want him back in the fold. Despite the many changes made, "A History of Violence" was praised by critics for its visceral imagery and chilling story that examines the soul of violence in its rawest form.
Wynonna Earp
Debuting in 2016, "Wynonna Earp" ran for four seasons on SyFy and tells the story of the titular gunslinger, Wynonna, a descendant of the famed Wild West lawman Wyatt Earp. More than a century after her forebear gunned down criminals on the frontier, Wynonna goes on the hunt for his old enemies, who've returned to the land of the living as demons. Endowed with a magical six-shooter, her mission sees her crisscrossing the land with help from her ancestor's best friend, Doc Holliday (Tim Rozon), who is revealed to be an immortal gunslinger and now Wynonna's boyfriend to boot.
What some might not know, however, is that Earp is no clever TV reinvention of the mythos of a Western icon, but rather an adaptation of a string of comic book miniseries' created by Beau Smith. Beginning life as a five-issue series in 1996 published by Image Comics, it introduced Wynonna Earp as a U.S. marshal and member of a special unit called the Monster Squad. Battling everything from blood-sucking vampires to murderous apparitions, she returns in "Wynonna Earp: Home on the Strange" in 2003, published by IDW, and again in "The Yeti Wars" in 2011. When the TV adaptation landed in 2016, it sparked more stories on the page, including an eight-issue series from IDW and "Wynonna Earp Legends," which includes contributions from Melanie Scrofano and Tim Rozon, who play Wynonna and Doc Holliday in the series.
R.I.P.D.
It might be one of the biggest flops of 2013, barely earning half its budget back at the box office, but "R.I.P.D." isn't quite as bad as its reputation suggests. Though no award-winner, the film is a breezy action-comedy with a good cast, revolving around Jeff Bridges and Ryan Reynolds as Roy and Nick, a pair of undead law enforcement agents who hunt down supernatural beings. In the film, the two agents must stop a devilish scheme that threatens to unleash hell on Earth.
The comic book it's based on actually launched back in 1999, published by Dark Horse Comics and created by writer Peter M. Lenkov. In this version, Nick is brought back to life and joins the R.I.P.D. but is also hoping to find out who it was who killed him, possibly as part of a diabolical conspiracy. The comic series was mostly forgotten but made a comeback in 2012 to coincide with the film's release, resulting in "R.I.P.D.: City of the Damned."
Though the film was a major disappointment, it still somehow got a follow-up almost a decade later. A direct-to-DVD affair that you probably never heard of, "R.I.P.D. 2: Rise of the Damned" stars Jeffrey Donovan and Rachel Adedeji.
30 Days of Night
Another horror-action movie, "30 Days of Night" is a 2007 film from David Slade, who'd made a name for himself with the Elliot Page thriller "Hard Candy" a couple of years before. This time, he tells a horrific vampire story set in the remote town of Barrow, Alaska. It's a region that falls victim to the polar night, a phenomenon that shrouds the entire town in darkness for 30 days. An inconvenience for the townspeople, it is a boon to unliving vampires, who descend on the town and have an entire month with no sunlight to fear, free to feast to their hearts' content.
Produced by horror maestro Sam Raimi and starring Josh Hartnett, Melissa George, Ben Foster, and Danny Huston, the film is also based on a comic book. The movie is co-written by Steve Niles, who also wrote the series. But somewhat ironically, his original comic book miniseries — released in 2002 and illustrated by Ben Templesmith — was rejected by comic book imprint Vertigo initially, then rejected as a film pitch too. Eventually, IDW Publishing took a liking to it, and the book found its way onto shelves. In addition to the initial three issues, several follow-ups were released, including "Dark Days" in 2004, which was also the title of the film's 2010 direct-to-video sequel.
Virus
Coming off the heels of her return to the "Halloween" franchise in "Halloween H20: 20 Years Later," Jamie Lee Curtis starred in the 1999 sci-fi horror movie "Virus." Also starring Donald Sutherland and William Baldwin, the film sees the crew of a salvage vessel unexpectedly making contact with an alien being after encountering a seemingly abandoned Russian ship.
Curtis plays former Naval officer Kelly Foster, who leads the crew as they're caught in a fight for their lives when the entity begins creating deadly robots that lay siege to the ship. Little did anyone know at the time of its release, however, that "Virus" was based on a little-known comic book from author Chuck Pfarrer — a former Navy SEAL himself — and published by Dark Horse in 1992. The original story is very much the same as the film, but this time centered on a Chinese vessel that is taken over by an extraterrestrial life form that uses its components — and its crew — to reproduce and spread.
Like "30 Days of Night," though, the story actually originated as a pitch for a film, but when Universal passed, Pfarrer decided to write it as a comic book instead. Though the 1999 film proved a bomb at the box office, it's gained a cult following over the years as an underrated big-budget action-horror thriller.
The Addams Family franchise
Chronicling the antics of a family of ghoulish oddballs, "The Addams Family" began its on-screen life as a TV series in 1964. An inverted sitcom with a dark sense of humor, the show centered on father Gomez (John Astin), wife Morticia (Carolyn Jones), Uncle Fester (Jackie Coogan), butler Lurch (Ted Cassidy), and precocious kids Pugsley (Ken Weatherwax) and Wednesday (Lisa Loring).
Though the series ran for just two seasons, it was resurrected as an animated series in 1973, and of course a pair of live-action feature films in the 1990s starring Raul Julia, Anjelica Huston, Christopher Lloyd, and Christina Ricci. The films reignited the series on TV, first with a short-lived Saturday morning cartoon in 1992 and then an ill-fated single-season reboot in 1998. Nearly 25 years later, it was reborn on Netflix, this time focused on the family's morose daughter in the eponymously titled "Wednesday."
But it all began as a series of comic strips published in the New Yorker, the brainchild of cartoonist Charles Addams, all the way back in 1938. A satire of modern American life, the family members didn't even have first names in the original comic, with its creator famously preferring Repelli and Pubert over Gomez and Pugsley.
Wanted
It's likely you've seen at least one movie adapted from a work by Mark Millar, whose comics have been adapted into a number of hit movies, including "Kick-Ass," "Kingsman," and their sequels. His work for Marvel heavily influenced the MCU, with arguably his most famous storyline later forming the basis for the film "Captain America: Civil War." But his first film adaptation arrived the same year as the birth of the MCU, with the 2008 action-thriller "Wanted."
The film stars James McAvoy as Wesley, an ordinary young man who discovers his father was a trained assassin. With the help of Fox (Angelina Jolie), Wesley learns how to access an array of latent abilities and become a deadly killer himself. The comic, published as a six-issue series in 2003, was slightly different, with Wesley not just the son of a hired assassin, but a fiendish supervillain. The world of "Wanted" also included an elaborate backstory involving a secret history of superheroes and a magical technology that wiped everyone's collective memory of their adventures.
While the movie is more loosely based on the comic than directly adapted from it, it was a big hit, amassing nearly $350 million at the box office, topping "The Incredible Hulk," which was released domestically just two weeks earlier.
Atomic Blonde
Set in the late 1980s, just as the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union is coming to a close, the 2017 film "Atomic Blonde" is helmed by David Leitch, co-director of "John Wick." A fast-paced thriller, it stars Charlize Theron as Lorraine Broughton, an elite intelligence agent who is forced into the field after the death of another agent. With the Berlin Wall about to come down, she must retrieve a top-secret dossier containing the names of every double agent in the region, and her only chance to succeed is to ally herself with CIA operative Emmett Kurzfeld (John Goodman).
A stylish, breathtaking action movie of the highest order, "Atomic Blonde" has a unique flavor. A period piece punctuated by bright colors and over-the-top action, it often feels ripped out of the pages of a comic book. Which is of course appropriate when we learn that the film was adapted from a 2012 graphic novel titled "The Coldest City," published by Oni Press, and written by Antony Johnston.
Influenced by the works of spy novelist John le Carré, "The Coldest City" was illustrated by Sam Hart with a decidedly cinematic feel that made it ripe for the screen. In 2016, Johnston followed it with a prequel, "The Coldest Winter," though a film follow-up has yet to materialize.
Cowboys & Aliens
Released in 2011, "Cowboys & Aliens" starred Daniel Craig, Harrison Ford, Olivia Wilde, and Sam Rockwell in an out-of-this-world sci-fi western about a mysterious drifter (Craig) who wanders into the town of Absolution and winds up helping them resist an alien invasion. Directed by Jon Favreau, it was actually the third comic book film in a row for him, as "Cowboys & Aliens" — like both "Iron Man" films before it — was also based on a comic book series.
The man behind it all was Scott Mitchell Rosenberg, the man who helped negotiate the deal that formed Image Comics in 1992. The "Cowboys & Aliens" comic was published by his own Platinum Studios Comics in 2006, and the story of how it came to be might be more fascinating than the film. Initially inked as a movie deal way back in 1997, Rosenberg had trouble getting the film up and running. When things fell apart, he resorted to having it published as a graphic novel, produced based on early drafts of the screenplay.
But having a comic to pitch to studios wasn't enough. Rosenberg wanted to be able to tout his book as a bestseller, he was alleged to have paid comic book retailers to order massive quantities of the title to goose the numbers. Now the creator of one of the industry's hottest titles, Rosenberg finally got the attention of the movie industry, and the film arrived shortly thereafter.
Ghost World
The early 2000s were awash in quirky teen coming-of-age stories, and in 2001 came the oddest of them all, a comedy starring young actors Scarlett Johansson and Thora Birch titled "Ghost World." The offbeat story focuses on Enid and Rebecca, a pair of oddball teenage best friends who have a falling out after one of them befriends a lonely older man named Seymour (Steve Buscemi). Nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay at the following year's Academy Awards, the film's script was written by director Terry Zwigoff, alongside Daniel Clowes, whose comic book the film is based on.
First appearing in a 1993 issue of Clowes' anthology title "Eightball," the black-and-white indie tale began as a serialized story, running for several years and eventually collected as "Ghost World" in 1998. Like the film, it explores the friendship of Rebecca Doppelmeyer and Enid Coleslaw, a pair of melancholy teens who fear emerging into adulthood. Together they wander around an anonymous American town in a story that sharply satirizes modern society.
Jeremiah
The history of science fiction is littered with short-lived cult classics, like "Firefly" and "Max Headroom." In 2002 we got another, from "Babylon 5" creator J. Michael Straczynski, titled "Jeremiah." It stars Malcolm-Jamal Warner and Luke Perry and is set 15 years after a deadly plague has wiped out all of the adults on the planet. The titular Jeremiah (Perry) had once been told by his father of a safe haven called the "Valhalla Sector," and he's been searching for it ever since. Along the way, he meets fellow survivor Kurdy Malloy (Warner), and together they must survive the world's many hardships, facing off against ruthless warlords while getting help from Ezekiel (Alex Zahara), a prophetic stranger.
"Jeremiah" is produced by "Cowboys & Aliens" mastermind Scott Mitchell Rosenberg and Platinum Studios. Unfortunately, it lasted just two seasons, coming to an end in 2004. But while the show's biggest fans hail the show's creator, Straczynski, for his masterful storytelling, he's not actually the man who dreamed it up. That's because the series is loosely based on a Belgian comic book of the same name.
Written and drawn by Hermann Huppen and published in 1979, the comic book "Jeremiah" takes place in a version of the United States that has been ravaged by racially driven wars. Ethnic groups are segregated in isolated pockets of civilization, and the series introduces Jeremiah and his friend Kurdy as a pair of frontier drifters. Straczynski took the post-apocalyptic setting and the names of the two leads but changed just about everything else.
Extraction
After starring as Thor in the MCU, Chris Hemsworth had an uneven slate of follow-ups that included a few modest hits like "Snow White and the Huntsman" and "The Cabin in the Woods," but also flops like "Red Dawn" and "Blackhat." But he'd finally find the perfect role when he paired with his "Avengers: Infinity War" directing duo Anthony and Joe Russo and frequent MCU stunt coordinator Sam Hargrave for the Netflix action-thriller "Extraction." The film puts him in the part of an Australian black ops soldier hired to rescue the son (Rudhraksh Jaiswal) of a drug lord (Pankaj Tripathi) who's been taken hostage by a rival faction.
Lauded for its exquisitely executed action set pieces that come nothing short of cinematic beauty, "Extraction" was compared by critics to old-school run-and-gun flicks of the '80s. But far from being inspired by Schwarzenegger classics like "Commando" and "Red Heat," the film is actually translated from a comic book published in 2014 titled "Ciudad." The book was written by the same two men who'd bring it to the screen, Joe and Anthony Russo, alongside Ande Parks, and was published just months after the release of their first action movie, "Captain America: The Winter Soldier." Though there may have been hopes of getting it made into a film, the graphic novel was actually the result of the pair's being approached by Oni Press and digging through their cache of unproduced story ideas for something that would work as a graphic novel.
Road to Perdition
A 1930s gangster movie starring a pair of Oscar winners? You might be surprised to learn that the 2002 Sam Mendes drama "Road to Perdition" was actually based on a comic book. In the film, Tom Hanks plays Michael Sullivan, a mobster whose young son (future "Superman & Lois" star Tyler Hoechlin) becomes a witness to one of his murders. This puts them in the crosshairs of Mr. Rooney (Paul Newman), who sends a vicious hitman (Jude Law) after them when they try to leave their life of crime.
"Road to Perdition" gave Hanks an unconventional role, far from the usual nice guys and sympathetic figures he's famous for. But it was all based on a crime fiction comic by Max Allan Collins, whose work includes "Dick Tracy" and novels based on "Criminal Minds" and "CSI." The original graphic novel, released by an imprint of "Batman" publisher DC Comics, appealed to director Sam Mendes for its larger themes rather than its story. "What was really interesting to me about the film was that it was narratively very simple, but thematically very complex," he told Entertainment Weekly on the film's release. Nominated for six Academy Awards — and winning one — it also starred a pre-Bond Daniel Craig, Jennifer Jason Leigh, and Stanley Tucci.
Dark Matter
The SyFy channel has been home to some of the most underrated genre series of the past 20 years, which often go under the radar because they don't air on bigger, more prestigious networks. From "12 Monkeys" to "Defiance," the 2010s delivered more, and in 2015 came "Dark Matter," an action-adventure series about a group of six individuals who wake up aboard a derelict spacecraft with amnesia. As they look to find answers regarding who they really are, they operate as a squad of rogue mercenaries hunting intergalactic fugitives.
"Dark Matter" is another series originally tapped for TV, but whose creators – Joseph Mallozzi and Paul Mullie, former writers and producers on "Stargate" — opted to develop into a comic book instead. Published by Dark Horse and illustrated by Garry Brown, the series got the attention of SyFy after it was published in 2012. Once on the air, the series received rave reviews from both critics and audiences, praised as a rollicking space western full of fun, likable characters. It ultimately ran for three seasons but was tragically cut short, with the final episode lingering on a brutal cliffhanger. The show's creators have been hoping to get a miniseries follow-up to tie up the loose ends ever since, but perhaps they'll have better luck if they try it as a comic book.
Snowpiercer
"Snowpiercer" took the sci-fi world by storm with a fresh take on the post-apocalypse back in 2013. In a bizarre future, the world of "Snowpiercer" has been destroyed by climate change with the surface of the planet having been reduced to an icy wasteland. The entirety of human civilization is packed into a massive train called the Snowpiercer, which circles the globe to keep them alive. But within the locomotive, society has been segmented by car, with the wealthiest living extravagantly in the front while the poorest live in squalor at the back. When a group of rebels in the rear band together, they fight back against the ruling class, killing their way to the front of the train.
A South Korean-Czech co-production directed by acclaimed South Korean filmmaker Bong Joon-Ho, "Snowpiercer" is a clear allegory for social inequality and was unlike anything audiences had seen before. Unless, that is, they'd read the French comic book on which it was based, titled "Le Transperceneige." The graphic novel was published all the way back in 1982, created by writer Jacques Lob and artist Jean-Marc Rochette, though it didn't receive its first English translation until 2014.
In their review of the series, The Independent called it "undoubtedly one of the greatest science fiction comics ever created." The film received critical acclaim itself, leading to a television adaptation starring Jennifer Connelly, Daveed Diggs, and Sean Bean in 2020.
Happy!
If you missed out on "Happy!" we're not surprised, as the two-season series seems to have come and gone with little fanfare. First airing on SyFy in 2017, the series chronicles the exploits of Nick Sax (Christopher Meloni, of "Law & Order: SVU" fame), a beleaguered cop who's been booted from the force and is now eking out a living as a hired killer. But when his daughter (Bryce Lorenzo) is kidnapped by a deranged man dressed as Santa Claus (Joseph D. Reitman), Nick gets help from Happy, his daughter's imaginary friend, who appears as a cartoonish imp voiced by Patton Oswalt.
As Sax hunts down the thugs behind a child trafficking ring, audiences bear witness to one of the most excessively violent, perverse, balls-to-the-wall action comedies on television. Not for the faint of heart, it might not come as a surprise to learn that "Happy!" was based on a comic by Grant Morrison and Darick Robertson. For those unfamiliar, Morrison and Robertson are the duo responsible for the comic book masterpiece "The Boys," also known for its visceral, violent story, and itself adapted into one of Amazon's biggest hits. While Season 1 of "Happy!" adapts the original miniseries published in 2013, Season 2 picks up where the comics left off with an entirely new, original story, with a premiere episode written by Morrison.
Bulletproof Monk
By the early 2000s, Hong Kong cinema had made its way stateside, with stars from the region quickly becoming hot names in Hollywood. This included Chow Yun-fat, and in 2003 he was paired with "American Pie" star Seann William Scott for an East-meets-West action thriller titled "Bulletproof Monk." Chow stars as the classic "man with no name," this time a monk from China who has drifted around the world on an ancient quest to protect a sacred scroll. Fleeing Tibet in the 1940s, the monk escapes Nazi tyranny, and in the 21st century arrives in America where he meets Kar (Scott), a street punk who he hopes will take up the mantle as the scroll's dedicated protector.
Though the movie was a flop in theaters and is most certainly a relic of its time, "Bulletproof Monk" is a forgotten action movie that deserves a second chance. But even audiences at the time probably never realized it too was based on a comic book from the late '90s. (Though with a name like "Bulletproof Monk," it's not exactly a surprise.) The three-issue series was written by Brett Lewis, Gotham Chopra, and RA Jones and illustrated by Michael Avon Oeming, who went on to co-create "Powers," a comic book that itself became a PlayStation original series in 2015 starring Sharlto Copley.
The Losers
Looking back, the cast of "The Losers" is ridiculous. Back in 2010, the film headlined by Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Chris Evans, Zoe Saldana, and Idris Elba was just another random action movie, but today, "The Losers" is full of big winners — people who have gone on to headline their own action films. A relatively low-budget flick, "The Losers" was neither particularly special nor especially awful. Maybe that's why it has been largely overlooked today, despite its roster of future superstars.
Drawing comparisons to "The A-Team" — a new live-action take on which came out months later — the film centers on a group of elite special forces soldiers who defy orders to save innocent lives and are railroaded for a mission gone wrong and forced to go on the run. Now, the team assembles when they get the opportunity to get revenge on Max (Jason Patric), the government agent who set them up. It might not sound like an ongoing DC comic book, but that's exactly what it was, published under their Vertigo imprint between 2003 and 2006. Running 32 issues, it was created by writer Andy Diggle and artist Mark Simpson (under his pseudonym "Jock") and was nominated for a prize for best new series at the 2004 Eisner Awards.
Men in Black
Who doesn't love "Men in Black," the iconic sci-fi action comedy from 1997? Starring Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones, the movie was an instant classic about a New York street cop (Smith) who is recruited into a secret government agency by Agent K (Jones), whose job is to monitor alien activity on Earth. But when an alien fugitive (Vincent D'Onofrio) goes on a murder spree looking for a mysterious but powerful device, K and his new partner J work together to save the world.
"Men in Black" was a monster success, spawning a series of sequels and a four-season animated series. But it was all born out of a little independent comic book title of the same name, published by Aircel Comics back in 1990. The original comic book series had a broader premise, more similar to "The X-Files" than what the films became. It also had a decidedly darker tone with little humor, while the agents used far more sinister methods. Created by writer Lowell Cunningham and artist Sandy Carruthers, a second miniseries arrived in 1991, published in conjunction with Malibu Comics, who were eventually acquired by Marvel a few years later.
Though the series hasn't seen new issues since 1997, the initial film trilogy received a spin-off in 2019, "Men in Black: International."
Red
Warren Ellis is one of comic's most prolific writers, responsible for work at both Marvel, DC, and beyond. His "Extremis" storyline in the pages of "Iron Man" formed the central story for the film "Iron Man 3," while his superhero team "The Authority" is due to be adapted into a feature film in James Gunn's newly rebooted DC cinematic universe. Back in 2010, though, the action-comedy "Red," starring Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman, John Malkovich, Helen Mirren, and Karl Urban, adapted one of his lesser-known titles, "Red."
Willis stars in the film as Frank Moses, a retired CIA agent who now leads a more ordinary life than the daring exploits of the black ops killer he once was. But after finding himself on the wrong end of an assassination attempt, Moses must seek out a group of former colleagues, including his old mentor Joe (Morgan Freeman), fellow agent Boggs (Malkovich), pilot Singer (James Remar), retired assassin Victoria (Mirren), and even a one-time rival — lovesick Russian FSB operative Simanov (Brian Cox) — to strike back at whoever wants him dead.
Released to good reviews and some real box office bucks, "Red" received a sequel in 2013 that added Catherine Zeta-Jones, Lee Byung-hun, and Anthony Hopkins to the sprawling all-star cast.
iZombie
Marrying elements of crime drama procedural and supernatural black comedy, "iZombie" aired on the CW network for five seasons beginning in 2015. It starred Rose McIver as Liv Moore, a medical resident who becomes a zombie in the premiere and struggles to live with her condition. Abandoning her old life, Liv is forced to feast on human brains to avoid reverting to a shambling day-walker, so she gets a job at a local morgue to have easy, constant access to what she needs. But she also realizes that she has the ability to absorb the memories of the brains she eats, and she begins helping a local detective solve crimes by feasting on murder victims. The series mixes tongue-in-cheek humor, zombie horror, and police mystery to become something unique.
But it wasn't created for television initially. Instead, it was adapted from a comic published by DC's Vertigo imprint in 2010, created by Chris Roberson and Mike Allred. The series had a slightly different premise, with a young girl named Gwen becoming a zombie and getting a job as a gravedigger to satisfy her hunger. The comic never has her solving crimes, instead focusing on her attempts to stop supernatural forces that threaten her town. First appearing in the anthology series "House of Mystery," it was spun off into its own series a year later that ran for 28 issues.