On September 12th 2018, Dark Horse will be releasing Mystery Science Theater 3000 The Comic #1. The 32 page first issue bring the riffing of MST3K off of your television screen and onto the pages of a comic book. Created for comics by Joel Hodgson, the comic book finds some of your favorite occupants of The Satellite of Love foisted into the 1962 (thankfully, now, public domain) comic book Johnny Jason Teen Reporter. But Johnny Jason is played by Tom Servo.
I've been a big MST3K fan for a very long time. The show got me through many a year of college. And since then, I've turned my kids onto the show, back their Kickstarter project, and seen the first of two live shows. And even I was a little skeptical about how the concept (bringing MST3K to comics) would work. After reading the first issue...I'm sold.
Dark Horse, Joel, the other writers and artists have cobbled together something I've never seen before. It's a property that works equally well on the screen as the page...taking advantage of entirely different formats. Instead of sitting in front of the film and riffing, the characters are within the comic book making jokes. And you can see what's been changed by mark of the speech/thought bubbles.
My opinion: This is a must buy for Mystery Science Theater 3000 fans. Or fans of classic comic books. Or fans of things that are funny.
For a look at some of the pages, check out below. There's also a variant cover by longtime MST3K DVD artist Steve Vance. And if you're in the mood to read the original public domain comic Jonah and The Bots invade, check out Johnny Jason Teen Report #2 at ComicBook+. Spoiler Alert: the original isn't nearly as funny as the MST3K version.
