A red band teaser trailer for writer/director Macon Blair’s remake of the Troma cult classic The Toxic Avenger (watch it HERE) was unveiled back in September – you can watch it at THIS LINK – but we’re still waiting to hear of a release date for that one. In the meantime, AHOY Comics has announced (via The Hollywood Reporter) that they are bringing the Toxic Avenger character back to the world of comic books for a five-issue mini-series they’re planning to get out into the world this fall! The first issue is expected to reach store shelves on October 9th.
The Hollywood Reporter notes that Matt Bors, the Pulitzer Prize finalist who founded the daily online political comics publication The Nib, and artist / caricaturist Fred Harper are working on the mini-series, which will be taking its cues from the 1984 version of The Toxic Avenger, not from the upcoming remake… but will also be giving the character a new origin story.
In the original movie, the Toxic Avenger starts out as a 98-pound janitor named Melvin Junko who, after falling into an oil drum filled with toxic waste, becomes an unlikely vigilante in his New Jersey town. In this comic book mini-series, Junko is a teen who is helping his parent run a junkyard in their boring New Jersey town, until train derailment of toxic waste transforms Melvin into a hideously deformed creature of superhuman size and strength. He will fight the corporation named Biohazard Solutions, also known as BS, and its PR-spewing chairwoman, uncovering a vast conspiracy more far-reaching than he could have ever imagined as his faith in humanity doing the right thing tested in ways he never thought possible.
AHOY Comics’ editor-in-chief Tom Peyer told The Hollywood Reporter that he “believes the comic will give fans of Toxie, as the character is endearingly called, what they yearn for in such a story while still keeping one foot rooted in the franchise’s origins of environmentalism.” Peyer said, “The series has violent action, gross mutations, bursting pustules, eye-popping visuals, and trenchant humor.“
Bors provided the following statement: “This series will combine elements of the original films with the Toxic Crusaders cartoon and characters in familiar ways, updated to tell a story of environmental devastation, corporate control, and social media mutation. The Toxic Avenger is first and foremost an environmental satire, one about a small town and its unremarkable people trapped and transformed by circumstances they don’t control. The story Fred Harper and I are telling is about people frustrated by authorities telling them not to worry about their life, that things are fine, even as their dog mutates in front of their eyes. And at its core it is about a powerless boy, Melvin, who finds out he can be incredibly strong, hideously mutated, well-admired, and incredibly heroic… but still ultimately powerless over human behavior.“
Back in the early ’90s, there was a Toxic Avenger comic book from Marvel Comics that only lasted for eleven issues. In 2008, Troma teamed up with Devil’s Due for Lloyd Kaufman Presents: The Toxic Avenger and Other Tromatic Tales.
Will you be checking out the new The Toxic Avenger comic book mini-series from AHOY Comics? Let us know by leaving a comment below. Here’s a look at one of the covers: