IDW To Take Another Shot At ‘T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents’

T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents has a hell of a pedigree: The impetus for the original series was none other than Wally Wood, who drew most of the original issues. The series itself also had an interesting, albeit not fully fleshed out, conceit: That these guys were working day jobs.

Since then, the team has bounced around, to say the least. Now it’s IDW’s turn in the barrel.

The history of the concept and its rights is almost more interesting than the book itself: Archie Comics published a few issues; a series was made with art from George Perez and Dave Cockrum, among others, by a company, Deluxe Comics, who didn’t own the rights; Penthouse took a crack at reviving it; Liefeld claims to have taken a crack at reviving it; and most recently DC did a couple of miniseries with Nick Spencer writing it and CAFU drawing. DC also reprinted the original Tower Comics issues in Archive editions.

So why is IDW now so interested in picking up this concept, including the reprint rights? True, licensed books are their bread and butter, but this is a fairly obscure concept, even for comics nerds. IDW hasn’t even announced a creative team yet.

A few answers can be found by poking around the press release, since one name pops out: Michael Uslan.

If the name sounds familiar, it’s because he’s pretty much Warner Bros. go-to superhero movie producer. To be fair, Uslan is also a legendary comic book nerd, a guy who had to donate his collection because it was taking up too much room in his enormous house. So he’s probably a pretty big fan of T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents just on its own.

That said, yeah, there’s probably a movie in the works.