8 TV Shows That Would Be Better Off As Comics

5. Dollhouse

We don't have anything against Joss Whedon, we swear. He's just had a bit of bad luck with TV in the past 12 years or so. Like Firefly, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel before it,Whedon's semi-failed sci-fi about willingly amnesiac slaves who are implanted with memories and hired by clients to go on missions (and usually have sex) has graduated from cancelled TV show to canonical comic continuation, though the jury's still out on whether that story really still needs to be told or not. Dollhouse's biggest issues could have been easily resolved if Whedon had chosen to tell it in his other preferred medium, comics. Those issues boiled down simply to network interference, something the Avengers director had encountered before with his other ill-fated sci-fi, Firefly, and the copious notes and changes to the show altered and diluted its message to the point where the creepiness and moral ambiguity Whedon had intended the show to have were replaced with shoot-outs, chase scenes and sexy dumb people. Dollhouse still managed to have brief moments of brilliant pathos and humour, but it's still generally regarded as a failure, and a comic rendition of the story would not only have given it the world-spanning scope the second season tried to accomplish but also the opportunity to be told honesty and without quite as much artifice.
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Film history obsessive, New Hollywood fetishist and comics evangelist.