TVSquad

Apple's iPhone and iPod are emerging as the preferred delivery device for online comic books. They're portable, hand-held and feature vivid screens capable of delivering any necessary colors. You can use the touch screen to flip the pages back and forth.

An online comics website, Comixology, is a central point for scores of online comics available via iTunes' App Store, including several titles based on popular genre shows of the recent and not-so-recent past.

You'll find that 80's anime after school favorite, Voltron living here. Marvel's animation-influenced X-Men flourishes in multiple versions. The Middleman, a now-canceled creative comic-book inspired children's live action show, continues in iPhone form. In fact, The Middleman stories on Comixology were written to continue the TV show's storyline.

With FOX's Sunday "Animation Domination" continuing to be a strong draw among the 18-49 crowd, the network is still out there looking for its next animated hit. And this time they went further than Seth MacFarlane's front door. FOX has inked a deal with Peter Bagge to produce a pilot based on The Bradleys.

The Bradleys are the family at the heart of Bagge's work over the past several years in seminal comic series Hate and Neat Stuff, along with their own series. While the comics followed Buddy Bradley through young adulthood, the FOX series would reportedly focus on his teen years, still at home with the family.

I've always liked Bagge's unique artistic style and thought it would lend itself very well to animation. There's a fluidity to his limbs and lines that reminds me of classic Disney black-and-white animation. The humor is very raw and grounded in very real, and not necessarily good, human behavior. It could be a great way for FOX to continue expanding their animation lineup.

The modern poster-child for a show that's "gone too soon" is Jericho. The impassioned fans buried CBS under a ton of nuts, which got the show renewed for a shortened second season. Your mileage of the quality of that season may vary, but the fact remains that the fans did something none of these internet campaigns today will be able to.

What people don't realize is that when Jericho came back for the second run, the ratings weren't any better than when the first season ended. So when they cancel your favorite show and you start mailing in bizarre objects and setting up your web petitions because "it worked for Jericho," remember that the networks remember Jericho as well. They remember that it failed to find a sizable audience twice.

"But wait," you say. "There was a season eight?" Yes, there was. It was in comic book form. And season eight will be in the same format. This is according to Buffy the Vampire Slayer creator Joss Whedon.

If you haven't been reading the comics, shame on you. Without the restrictions of a television budget, some crazy cool things have been happening. Like Dawn growing to enormous size and Buffy teaming up with Dracula to take out a band of rogue Asian vampires. Also, Buffy travels to the future to meet Slayer-from-the-future Malaka Fray (who was in a previous comic series of her own).

Whedon is obviously a fan of comics. The good news is, in comic books, the series never has to end. We could all be enjoying Buffy season 337 in a few centuries. Well, our descendants would be anyway. It's something to look forward to.

[Watch clips and free episodes of Buffy at SlashControl.]

Caprica producer and former Buffy the Vampire Slayer scribe Jane Espenson is one of the minds behind the latest arc on Joss Whedon's Buffy comic that sees vampires coming out of the coffin. After the very True Blood-esque outing, vacuous vamp Harmony goes on The Colbert Report to, of course, promote her new reality TV show in the latest issue of Dark Horse Presents.

The Buffy comic is a direct continuation of Joss Whedon's TV series, and the medium has allowed the Buffy story to go to places it never could have gone on TV. Fans itching for a Buffy fix should pick up an issue or head over to MySpace to follow Harmony's adventures with Clem, the hilarious "loose-skinned demon" who first befriended Buffy and crew on the TV series.

Colbert is becoming a regular in the comic book world, with appearances in Spider-Man and his own comic book series, Stephen Colbert's Tek Jansen. Maybe Buffy should show up on The Daily Show to give Jon Stewart some comic book love in next month's issue.

[Via: Comics Alliance]

Now that the world's collective pre-teen subconscious has been thoroughly distracted by vampires with glittering skin or charming Southern accents, AMC is sneakily bringing back some zombie love. According to Variety, the comic series created by writer Robert Kirkman and illustrator Tony Moore, The Walking Dead, is coming to AMC. Bonus: Frank Darabont will be writing and directing.

It's about time! Let's give the blood suckers a break and revisit some good ol' brain eaters, shall we?

G.I. Joe and Transformers climbed to their lofty perches atop Hollywood's food chain from their iconic beginnings on 80's television.

Now, IDW Publishing is helping to bridge the gap between those classic 80's shows and their 21st Century big screen adaptations with new series of digital comic books based on the adventures of Snake Eyes, The Baroness, Optimus Prime and Megatron.

Made especially for online devices like iPods and the iPhone, these digital comics should be a welcome site for hardcore fans of the original TV hits as they're not blown away by the CGI-driven movie adaptions. Yes, the animation of those after-school cartoons was about one frame every four minutes, but they had such purity and charm to their morality plays.

Outside of art school, I'm not sure how many people are really into both Project Runway and comic books. Marvel, however, seems determined to tap into that audience by including the ever-popular Tim Gunn in its upcoming mini-series, Models, Inc., which features some of the finest ladies in the Marvel Universe taking on the catwalk. I guess if you really think about it, it's not really straying too far from comics about chicks with Gunns.

Ha! Yes! I'm just gonna pat myself on the back for that one because I know no one else will.

Bill Hader and Seth Meyers (the latter of whom is the head writer for Saturday Night Live) will be writing Spider-Man ... the comic book, not the next movie. Their single-issue story is called "The Short Halloween" (which I presume is a parody of a Batman comic story called "The Long Halloween") and will be in finer comic book shops on May 13.

This isn't the first time a comedy writer has written a comic book. I recall Gilbert Gotfried helping out with an issue of Superboy and Patton Oswalt writing a one-shot Justice League special, among others. While I don't think this will get the same level of publicity as Barack Obama being on a Spider-Man cover, it's kind of cool to hear about. I wonder if Spider-Man will sing his own rendition of "Dick In A Box".

In short, comedians are huge nerds. But this is nothing you didn't know before.

[via ComicMix]

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.

I don't know about you, but when creator Bryan Fuller talked about concluding all the story threads from Pushing Daisies as a comic book, I was less than enthused. Now, however, I've got renewed hope.

No, ABC is not even mentioning bringing Daisies back. They're not even committing to broadcasting the last few episodes. But Kristin Chenoweth thinks Pushing Daisies might be a movie. That's right, the show could/would/should be wrapped up as a movie in her estimation.

Do not adjust your web browser. You are now entering the Retro Squad, where we are reviewing past episodes of classic TV shows.

Here is one of those questions that doesn't come up too much in normal conversation. Yet, it's one of those things that, once you think about it, does make you go 'hmmm'. It's about the Super Friends. Well, actually, the Superfriends. Or, is it the SuperFriends?

I've seen it written so many ways over the last 35 years(!) that it is a bit confusing. And, while it probably isn't the most earth-shattering question, it is something to take into consideration when you are writing a post about the Saturday morning show. Especially when there are fans of the show reading the post who are ready and willing to point out the mis-spelling in fine detail.

So, for the purposes of accuracy, I present the following evidence to you, the TV Squad readers, to help me determine the proper spelling.

Battlestar Galactica has one. So does Supernatural, Buffy, the Vampire Slayer, and Angel. Even the newest incarnation of Doctor Who has one as of January. What do these shows have, besides a huge fan following? They all have their own comic books which take place during the current run of the series or continue the story where shows ended their run. And now, NBC's action-comedy Chuck will be joining the ranks of the small screen in small print.

The Chuck comic book, which will be created by DC Comics imprint WildStorm, will follow Mr. Bartowski and his Nerd Herd and secret agent pals in a series of worldwide adventures that producers of the television show just don't have the budget for. Being a comic book you can probably expect some cliffhanger endings, bigger special effects, and Chuck to gain some mutant powers.

The comic book series will be available starting June 11th.

[via PopCandy]

(S08I12) I never really cared for the Dracula episode of Buffy. It definitely had its funny moments, but having Dracula thrown into the Buffyverse lore was hard to stomach. Not to mention this ass had an easy time of wooing Buffy. Oh, and Xander too.

That said, this was a great issue. It marks the first of a series of issues written by TV Buffy writer Drew Goddard, and the feeling from the show is captured perfectly. For some reason I wasn't able to say that as much before, but here I feel right at home.

Some of you may not know this already, but the latest issue of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer season 8 comic hit stores last week, when originally it was slated to come out, I believe, this week. As I was picking up my copy, I got to wondering if the TV Squad readers even cared to have me continue to review them, especially with the news that there will be a season 9 comic.

So, once again I'm going to take advantage of the use of polls and leave it up to you. While I'm definitely going to keep buying and reading these books, do you want me to continue to review them here for you? I'll check the results of the poll (after the jump) later this week and decide.