TVSquad

It's hard to deny the passion that fans of CBS's late apocalyptic drama Jericho had. Their "nuts" campaign prompted the network to reverse order and bring back the show after officially canceling it. That second season did provide some closure on many of the dangling plot threads, but some fans felt it didn't live up to the quality of the first. Whether this had to do with the reduced episode order or the reduced budget is uncertain, but none of that matters now.

Thanks to the ongoing dedication of those fans, Devil's Due Publishing has inked a deal with CBS Consumer Products to continue the story of Jericho in comic book format. Both Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel have had amazing success publishing their new "seasons" in the comic book medium. More recently, Sci Fi's Farscape launched a comic continuation of its own, while many other properties are telling original tales in comics (Eureka, Supernatural and Fringe come to mind). But with Jericho being far less sci-fi/fantasy in its presentation, it'll be interesting to see if its fans follow it to this new medium.

Considering Jericho was popular with demographics not normally associated with comics, I'm not sure how big a response there will be. And sorry, ladies, but you'll have to settle for line drawings of Skeet Ulrich. While Dan Schotz, Co-Executive Producer of Jericho says that it was fan enthusiasm that drove them "to find new and fresh ways to tell the Jericho story ... we are so thrilled about this comic book series and the endless possibilities for the future of Jericho," nowhere does he mention what this might mean for the proposed Jericho feature film, first mentioned earlier this year.

However, since that is supposed to be a stand-alone story that explores a more national response to the attacks that crippled and destroyed American society as we know it, there's no reason that we couldn't have our comics and a movie, too. I'm just worried that this news is the positive spin on a movie deal possibly falling through. Still, I'm a fan of comics anyway, so it's no skin off my back to have to read the further adventures of one of my favorite shows rather than watch it on the screen.

What I do want them to do, though, is go back and undo the ending we got. Two endings were filmed, one with a more dire cliffhanger to be continued in the third season, and the one we got which was a compromised ending providing more closure. If the show's not ending, I don't think a little retcon is completely out of order. Just do your "Previously on Jericho" bit to start the comic and then change the ending a bit. The old movie serials used to do it all the time (Hey, that guy didn't get out of the burning car driving off the cliff last week!). After all, the cliffhanger is the ending they really wanted to give us, and this will allow them to tell their originally intended story with no more compromises.