Netflix is the primary go-to streaming platform for comic book and graphic novel adaptations and 2022 is rumored to be a tent pole year for new stories from this colorful world of literature. Creators and screenwriters have been steadfastly mining the medium since Richard Donner's Superman, Tim Burton's Batman, and the ball really began rolling with Jon Favreau's Iron Man.
Marvel and DC franchises have essentially taken over most of cinema and television's most eagerly anticipated projects, and with Marvel's departure to Disney+, Netflix is branching out with new companies from the comic world.
BRZRKR (Boom! Studios)
Keanu Reeves co-wrote this wildly graphic comic book in 2021 and already signed on to produce and star in a Netflix vehicle adapted to his first foray into writing for the popular medium. He'll also be voicing the same character in a Netflix anime companion project.
The 12 issue series follows a man known only as B., who is half-mortal and half god, cursed to live a bloodied existence of wetwork for the U.S. government, with the eventual goal of discovering how and why he's immortal and how he might finally end such an endless, anguished life. Nearly everyone already knows that Reeves excels at portraying tortured antiheroes surrounded by demonstrative measures of violence, and this sounds right up his alley.
American Jesus (Millarworld)
Netflix acquired the bulk rights to Scottish comic writer Mark Millar's extensive catalogue of work back in 2017, including this inventive take on the second coming of Jesus Christ. In the series, a 12-year-old boy discovers he's Christ incarnate when he realizes he can turn water to wine, heal the sick, and potentially even resurrect the dead.
While the concept might prove controversial to certain segments of people, the idea of an multi-lingual action-comedy addressing a potential Armageddon and all the tropes and expected byproducts of the end of days could also be a fantastic binge-worthy experience among the many comic book-based Netflix shows.
The Magic Order (Image/Millarworld)
Platforms far and wide have been searching for the next multiple-entry series in the veins of Harry Potter and Millar's 2018 work The Magic Order may fit the bill. In the acclaimed series, a secret cabal of five different families of wizards and sorceresses vie to keep the world safe from supernatural and otherworldly threats.
Their members, led by the Moonstone family, find themselves threatened when certain of their ilk are targeted and assassinated, prompting the others to discover the identity of the unknown assailant and track them down. Netflix's more adult-oriented offerings might be a perfect fit for Millar's fantasy-crime amalgam characters of The Sopranos and Harry Potter, a sort of King Lear with magic wands.
Grendel (Dark Horse)
Writer Matt Wagner fans have long awaited an adaptation to his most seminal creation of Grendel. Originally penned in the style of European noir works like Diabolik, Wagner evolved the character over the course of many years. The work features both protagonists and antagonists assuming the Grendel mantle and identity, ranging from the original Hunter Rose and Christine Spar to Orion Assante to the paladin cyborg Grendel-Prime. Almost invariably those who take the Grendel role meet with some sort of tragedy by story's end.
The new Netflix series is purportedly based on the original run with Hunter Rose, starring Abubakr Ali in the main role, and it should be a compelling take on the dark and gritty vigilante.
The Umbrella Academy Season 3 (Dark Horse)
The already wildly popular Netflix series has been a hit with viewers and fans expect season three to be the same. With the likes of Elliot Page as Victor Hargreeves, Kate Walsh as The Handler, and Mary J. Blige as Cha Cha, the action comedy is based on a family of dysfunctional adopted superhero siblings who reunite after an extended parting to solve the mystery of their father's death and, of course, face pending apocalypses by jumping through time.
Season three is said to be little different in terms of its action, scope, and comic laughs, and it heralds the arrival of The Sparrow Academy, a counterpoint group to the ever discombobulated Hargreeves family.
Bone (Image)
Long have comic book fans hoped for an adaptation to this legendary Eisner and Harvey Award-winning comedy and dark fantasy series, originally self-published by Jeff Smith and optioned later by Image Comics.
The Netflix adaptation is said to be an animated children's series and follows the ongoing antics of Fone Bone and his cousins, who end up getting lost in a fairy-tale valley while trying to make their way back to their hometown of Boneville, all while being pursued by rats and the main antagonist Lord of Locusts. The series was critically acclaimed, with Time magazine calling it the best all-ages graphic novel ever produced, and Netflix's animation department will surely do it justice.
The Sandman (DC)
Unsurprisingly, this adaptation is the one comic book fans are most invested in, as Neil Gaiman's magnum opus has long loitered in pre-production limbo, with studios and Gaiman himself reluctant to adapt such a sweeping saga of mythology and adult content.
The tale tells the story of Morpheus, a deity who represents the personification of dream and reality and navigates through time and history itself as an entity with his own internal existential struggles. While the concept languished in the difficulty of a cinematic translation, Netflix wisely opted to fashion it as a multi-seasonal television series, with Gaiman personally overseeing the process, which will surely be a rollicking and intense viewing pleasure.