Devil’s Due Publishing has announced an agreement with CBS Consumer Products that will allow DDP to publish a new comic book series tied to the Jericho TV series, which aired on CBS from 2006-2008.  Set in the fictional town of Jericho, Kansas, the TV series examined what happened to the residents of the town in the aftermath of a nuclear strike on 23 cities in the United States.  Devil’s Due’s Jericho comic book series, which is due out this fall, will feature plenty of input from the original Jericho creative team of Dan Shotz, Jon Turtletaub, Carol Barbee, Karim Zreik, and Jon Steinberg,  and will pick up where the television series left off answering many of the questions of longtime fans.

Continuing hit cult TV series in comic book form has generated a number of hits, most notably Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 8 from Dark Horse.  Jericho, which spawned a successful trading card series from Inkworks, appears to be an excellent candidate to continue the trend.  It made “TV Guide’s List of Cult TV Shows,” and when the network first cancelled the show, angry viewers forced CBS to relent (see “CBS Surrenders to Nuts”).  Unfortunately, the writers’ strike interfered with normal viewing patterns and made it impossible for the series to gain any ratings traction (see “CBS Nukes Jericho”), but the series has enjoyed a re-run on the Sci Fi Channel (see “Sci Fi Gets Jericho”).

It is important to remember the differences in scale between the numbers necessary to generate successful network TV ratings and those required to make a successful comic book series.  Hollywood execs are worried because the Watchmen movie debuted at the lower end of expectations, but Watchmen graphic novels are still selling at a record pace (for the history of comics) in bookstores and online at Amazon where it is the top-selling book of any kind.  It is often the intensity of the fans that is more important than their numbers when it comes to the successful merchandising of a property.