The Satellite of Love will be taking a break from watching cheesy movies to instead turn the page on some cheesy comics!
With Mystery Science Theater 3000 coming back, the world regards the series in a bit of a different light. It used to simply be a cult favorite that so many people latched onto. In its absence, the show has proven itself to be a landmark of geek culture. It essentially came back because Joel Hodgson realized how much of a moneymaking vehicle it truly is based on the excessive amount of demand. Between all the checks he’d receive for DVD sales and the insane amount earned from the Kickstarter, Joel was able to point at it all and say to suit-wearing folk, “This show will make money! There’s your reason to bring it back from the dead!”
And so, with that comes extra merchandise. That includes the intriguing announcement that Dark Horse Comics will be releasing Mystery Science Theater 3000 comics.
That’s...man, that’s such a great idea that I can’t believe it’s taken so long. In fact, Dark Horse’s VP of Publishing Randy Stradley has been trying to put this together for decades. He attempted it back in the early 90s, but caught them at an awkward time as Joel was about to leave the show and the then-early plans to spin-off into an MST3Kmovie made merchandising the series too complicated to pull off due to legal issues.
A few years later, Acclaim was going to do an MST3Kgraphic novel where Mike and the Bots would make fun of old Gold Key and Dell comics. While it got far enough for solicitations to hit, Acclaim ended up axing it as a cost-cutting measure.
But now we’re finally getting riffing in comic form. We don’t know who will be writing it, what the target will be, how the format will look, and even when it comes out, but it should be a blast. In theory, at least. The closest thing I can think of to an MST3Kcomic is the old Beavis and Butt-head Marvel series from the early 90s, where they would occasionally read a page of a superhero comic and make fart and penis jokes.
It wasn’t high art, but still. When Beavis claimed Namor wears a “see-my-weenie bikini,” I laughed. I’m a simple man.
Meanwhile, the Mystery Science Theater 3000revival should be coming very soon to Netflix. Presumably late-March. There has already been a screening of the first new episode and while there are a lot of non-disclosure agreements, the word is that it's all good.
Gavin Jasper would pay top dollar to see a riffed version of Dell Dracula. Follow Gavin on Twitter!