Joe Hill’s Tales from the Darkside scripts to be published by IDW

Last Updated on August 2, 2021

The CW opted not to pursue the reboot of the 1983 – 1988 anthology series Tales from the Darkside that author Joe Hill was developing for them, but just because the show's episodes will never reach the air doesn't mean that Hill's story ideas will remain a mystery to us. In fact, we'll have two different ways to enjoy the material Hill had written for the abandoned show.

Hill's approach to the anthology was described in this way: 

The anthology series will feature only one regular character, Newman. A weathered and tortured young man, Newman is the guide to the unsuspecting who come across The Darkside. Newman – a man with his own desperate, wrenching secrets – knows exactly what’s causing the terrifying Darkside Events that drive the series. What he doesn’t know is how to stop them.

A few months ago, we learned that, starting in June, IDW will be publishing a four issues Tales from the Darkside comic book written by Hill from the scripts he had created for the show. Now it has been announced that, in addition to the comic series, IDW will be releasing a hardcover book collecting the three scripts Hill had completed before The CW dropped the axe. The scripts will be accompanied by illustrations by Charles Paul Wilson III, who previously worked with the writer on the graphic novel Wraith, a prequel to Hill's book NOS4A2.

Hill had this to say: 

When I was offered a chance to reinvent Tales from the Darkside, I leapt. This was a landmark show for my generation: our Twilight Zone, our Outer Limits. Right away, I wanted to do something that honored the spirit of the original Darkside… and at the same time I wanted to go bigger, to do something fresh, something with scope. In the end I wrote three scripts and sketched a vision for a whole Darkside universe. I envisioned a series of individual horror stories that would, ultimately, turn out to be connected by a single mythology. I really wanted to do something with the scale of Locke & Key. TV is tough and in the end we didn't quite make it to the little screen. But it's a delight and a thrill to share the scripts alongside Charles Paul Wilson's beautifully sick illustrations. Here's the show that could've been, now playing in your imagination."

Tales from the Darkside: Scripts by Joe Hill will be on shelves this October.