AMAZING STORIES RETURNING: Late last week news began circulating that Amazing Stories, originally produced by Steven Spielberg, may be returning to television.
Entertainment Weekly says that Bryan Fuller will be leading the revived series for NBC.
Fuller was showrunner for NBC’s Hannibal, which was canceled last spring, and is developing American Gods, a series based on Neil Gaiman‘s novel, for Starz.
You might also remember that Fuller created the quirky TV series Pushing Daisies, as well as Wonderfalls. In Pushing Daisies, Ned the Pieman‘s apartment walls sported framed pulp covers: a trio of Texas Ranger covers and the cover of the October 1948 number of Amazing Stories.
I was sorely disappointed by the original series. I went in hoping that they would be adapting classic pulp tales from the Amazing Stories pulp. Yeah, I admit that was probably wishful thinking to begin with.
If the new series comes to fruition, I’m pessimistic that the writers will be looking to the pulp magazines for source material. Too bad.
THE WHISPERS GO QUIET: It’s game over — to borrow the title of the final episode of season 1 — for ABC’s The Whispers. The series won’t be renewed.
The Whispers, which aired 13 episodes over the summer, was based on Ray Bradbury‘s short story “Zero House.” That story, about an alien named Drill communicating with children as it lay the ground work for an invasion, first appeared in the Fall 1948 number of Planet Stories.
The TV series took the premise and ran with it. But I was never certain where, exactly, it was leading.
A PULP ARTIST PASSES: Artist Murphy Anderson died Friday, Oct. 23, 2015. He was 89.
Though he’s most widely known for his work as an inker for DC Comics,
the North Carolina native also illustrated interior art for Planet Stories, Fantastic Adventures, and Amazing Stories early in his career.
Anderson started out at Fiction House drawing a number of its comic books. He later illustrated the Buck Rogers comic strip, and comics for Pines, Marvel, and Ziff-Davis.
Murphy Anderson was guest of honor at Pulpcon more than once. He was one of the few to be so honored more than once. I seem to remember that he and Rusty Hevelin were friends and since Rusty ran the show back in the 1980’s and 1990’s, he had Murphy Anderson as guest at least twice.