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Back Issues: ‘Bill and Ted’s’ excellent comics journey

Bill S. Preston Esquire and Ted Theodore Logan return to theaters (and at home on demand) last week with “Bill and Ted Face the Music.”

But this isn’t the first time in nearly 30 years the time-traveling duo has continued their excellent adventures and bogus journeys. The others happened in comics.

I’d heard about a recent “Bill and Ted” series from BOOM! Studios, but when I went looking for it, found out their comic book history reached back even further, to an adaptation of “Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey,” written and drawn by Evan Dorkin. That morphed into the ongoing “Bill & Ted’s Excellent Comic Book,” which featured Bill, Ted, Death, Abraham Lincoln, Station and more and was nominated for an Eisner Award for Best Humor Comic.

BOOM! released “Bill & Ted’s Most Triumphant Return” in 2015, picking up five seconds after the climax of “Bogus Journey.” The guys rushed to help out their grim reaper pal in “Bill & Ted Go to Hell” and traveled through space in “Bill & Ted Save the Universe.”

The license has moved to Dark Horse, and “Bill & Ted are Doomed,” a prequel to the upcoming film, is due to be released in September, with Dorkin returning for writing duties.

“Bill and Ted” is far from the only movie franchise to continue in comics. I’ve written before about the long pedigree of “Aliens” and “Predator” in their own series, and each other’s.

Before Indiana Jones went on his “last” crusade or hid in that refrigerator en route to finding crystal skulls, his further adventures were chronicled in Marvel’s aptly titled “Further Adventures of Indiana Jones.” Dark Horse picked up the license and published limited series in the ’90s with titles like “Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis,” “…Arms of Gold,” “…Iron Phoenix” and “…Shrine of the Sea Devil.”

Marvel adapted the original “Star Wars” movie and kept the series going after that, with little guidance from Hollywood. That’s how we got Jaxxon, the 6-foot-tall rabbit who was made canon in a short story in one of Marvel’s more recent titles.

The legendary artist and writer Jack Kirby adapted the story from Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey,” itself based on the work of Arthur C. Clarke, in an oversized “treasury edition.” A series followed with original stories that made a mark on Marvel history with the introduction of Machine Man, who would go on to join the Avengers and continues to pop up in continuity, most recently in “Tony Stark: Iron Man.”

Director John Carpenter teamed up with writer Eric Powell and artist Brian Churilla on a “Big Trouble in Little China” comic that picked up right where the movie ended. In 2016, the character Jack Burton met up with one of Kurt Russell’s other most famous characters, Snake Plissken, in the six-issue “Big Trouble in Little China/Escape from New York.”

“Back to the Future” made its first foray into comics in 1991, tying in with the animated series. Screenwriter Bob Gale shepherded the franchise’s comic return through IDW Publishing in 2015, with short stories that expanded upon or filled in blanks from the films. That segued into an ongoing with original stories when the series got a warm welcome from readers.

The new film may have been delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic but the “Ghostbusters” adventures have continued in comics with limited and ongoing series from IDW. They’ve had their share of off-the-wall crossovers, from the movie and animated “Real Ghostbusters” meeting up to sharing top billing with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in 2014 and 2017.

Some superheroes debuted at the multiplex before appearing in comics, instead of the other way around.

One of my forgotten favorites was 1993’s “Meteor Man.” The movie was adapted in an oversized one-shot that segued into a six-issue limited series featuring the titular hero taking on new villains while teaming up with Marvel characters like Spider-Man and Night Thrasher. (Scoff if you like; Night Thrasher was big in the ’90s.)

There have been some more unlikely jumps to comics as well.

The sequel to “Fight Club” did not come as a novel or in theaters but in a 2015 Dark Horse series by original author Chuck Palahniuk. The weirdly meta story was ideally suited for the medium and spawned “Fight Club 3” in 2019.

Evan Bevins can be reached at ebevins@newsandsentinel.com.

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Recommended Reading

* “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Comic Book Archive” – Collecting Marvel’s adaptation of “Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey” and the series that followed it, “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Comic Book.”

* “Bill and Ted’s Most Triumphant Return” – Another way Bill and Ted’s story might have gone is shown in this 2015 limited series from BOOM! Studios.

* “Back to the Future: The Heavy Collection” Vol. 1 – Collects the first 12 issues of IDW’s “Back to the Future” series, including stories that expanded on the movies and the six-part “Continuum Conundrum” story.

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