8 TV Shows That Would Be Better Off As Comics

Shows that didn't live up to their full potential and might have worked better on the printed page.

Sometimes a TV show doesn't work. There might be promise in the premise but the execution isn't up to the snuff, with the blame landing on anything from budgetary concerns and studio meddling to cock-ups in the writers' room and woefully miscast actors. (Funnily enough, all of those criticisms can be levelled at The Walking Dead's television incarnation, but it's one of the most successful series out there so it must just be the exception that proves the rule.) It can often come down to something as simple as the show not quite clicking with itself or connecting with an audience in the way it needs to, and many shows limp along for a season or two until their creators (or their replacement) figure out what they need to do in order to make them real TV shows and do that, or are simply taken out back and quietly put down by the network, cursing themselves all the while for ever thinking this limping runt could ever make it past a year. Some stories just aren't meant to be told on television. But what if that's just because it's the wrong medium for them? Maybe comics are a better venue for ambitious, high-concept ideas that rarely have the budget, talent and manpower behind them to pull off successfully. The following list examines some current and recent series that aren€™t living (or didn€™t live) up to their full potential on the small screen and might have worked better on the printed page. It would be pertinent to mention at this point that many of the following shows have already been adapted into comics, either as non-canonical stories or official continuations of the series. Those have had varying degrees of success, but we're imagining a world in which these stories were first told as comics as opposed to having comics made of them.
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Film history obsessive, New Hollywood fetishist and comics evangelist.