It used to be that when a TV show was canceled, that was the end; any dreams of future projects remained just that — dreams of the fans. But producers and creative types are starting to realize that just because a show ends, it doesn’t mean the fan base stops caring. “Buffy” is about to wrap up Season 9 in comic form (and Season 10 is on the way), a “Fringe” novel is on bookshelves, a “Veronica Mars” movie and books are planned for next year, and “24” will also return for another season in 2014.
Perhaps most exciting of all, though, is “X-Files” Season 10, which is following the “Buffy”/”Angel” template of continuing the TV series in comics. And just as Joss Whedon is the “executive producer” on the Buffyverse titles, Chris Carter is back at the helm of his seminal series about FBI agents Mulder and Scully investigating weird stuff around the country.
IDW Comics’ continuation of “The X-Files” is a pleasant surprise because I had assumed that Carter had put storytelling behind him in order to focus on surfing and relaxing. A “Millennium” movie never materialized, nor did a third “X-Files” movie, which should have come out in December 2012 to mark the Mayan apocalypse and tie in with the Season 9 finale. “X-Files” had enjoyed a nice comics run with Topps during the TV series’ heyday, and Carter’s second-in-command, Frank Spotnitz, penned a few issues for Wildstorm around the time of 2008’s “I Want to Believe.”
Of course, since Season 10 Issue 1 picks up where that movie left off, Mulder and Scully aren’t actually with the FBI anymore. And as with that movie, there’s no mention of Doggett and Reyes. But that’s OK, because there are a lot of touches that tie in with the saga — notably Scully wondering aloud if she did the right thing by giving up William for adoption. All told, “Believers Part 1” feels like a Carter-penned season premiere (and, indeed, he is a co-writer).
The dramatic stakes seem higher than any previous “X-Files” yarn in this medium, a reminder that this isn’t a mere spinoff for the sake of cashing in. Skinner shows up — and seemingly winds up killed in his home! Carter and co-writer Joe Harris end up not going that far, but it’s still a nicely staged shock as Mulder discovers his barely conscious former boss. The opening is also staged like a TV teaser, as we follow a harried woman running away from monsters — the “camera” pulls back, and we see it’s Scully.
Carter and Harris write “Believers Part 1” like a TV script, and Michael Walsh stages panels in such a way that I can imagine David Duchovny snatching a baseball out of the air in a certain smirking way, Gillian Anderson ministering to a patient with a pleasant bedside manner, and Mitch Pileggi stiffly walking into a room, trench coat flowing. Walsh’s stylized art doesn’t go for photo-realism the way Topps and Wildstorm did; nonetheless, the mood and color of “The X-Files” are spot-on.
It’s gonna take more issues to find out what exactly these monsters are, and that’s the downside of TV titles switching to comics — each issue feels like only part of a TV episode, and “The X-Files” is not a show where you can only watch part of an episode and comfortably walk away. More mysteries are peppered in by the freshly inspired writers: Why does a mysterious girl know Scully by a different name? And why are the Lone Gunmen pictured in the teaser for Issue 2? (They were killed off, much to my chagrin, in Season 9.)
And what about the cover art on the Hastings exclusive? Is it just for fun, or are the FBI-partners-turned-lovebirds going to start their own detective agency? There’s no indication of this in the first issue, but at any rate, it’s a very cool cover.
The story might be better read in a trade paperback collection. Still, I’ll be back for Issue 2, because if nothing else, I want to believe a whole “season” of “The X-Files” can work in comic form.