Comic Book Resources

SDCC '09 | Bat Boy and his freakish friends head to comics

Well, this is certainly unexpected: IDW Publishing is partnering with Weekly World News to bring some of the bizarre characters of the supermarket tabloid to comics.

A four-issue miniseries called The Irredemption of Ed Anger will debut in January and feature a who's who of WWN's denizens: the "half-human and half-bat" Bat Boy, far right-wing columnist Ed Anger, simian psychologist to the stars PhD Ape, political pundit UFO Alien, reptilian good ol’ boy Manigator, and others -- including Chaos Cloud, the unpredictable weather front with the face of François Mitterand.

The series will be written by IDW Publisher and Editor-in-Chief Chris Ryall and illustrated by Alan Robinson.

Weekly World News launched in 1979, introducing its readers to sensational stories under the banner of "The World's Only Reliable News." Human-animal hybrids, extraterrestrial trysts and Bigfoot sightings all found a place in its black-and-white pages.

Although the tabloid reached a peak circulation of 1.2 million in the '80s, that number had dropped to just 83,000 by 2006. WWN ended in print form in 2007 but continues as a website.