It may not be in the form of a movie, but we’re finally getting some moreBubba Ho-Tep. IDW Comics is launching a brand new,Bubba Ho-Tepprequel comic next year, courtesy of creator Joe R. Lansdale, who wrote the story the 2002cult classic movieis based on. The series will be co-written by Lansdale and Joshua Jabcuga, with art courtesy of Todd Galusha. Here’s what Lansdale had to say about the new series, which launches in March of 2018.
“Bubba Ho-Tep was an accidental story that turned out to be my first film adaptation, and it’s still going strong in story and film. And finally, it has inspired a background story that was first a novel, and is now represented in the medium that first made me want to be a writer: Comics.Graphic novels. What we used to call Funny Books. I’m excited and looking forward to readers discovering it all in color and looking fine.”
In case you aren’t familiar with the originalBubba Ho-Tep, the movie is set in analternate realityand centers on a now aged Elvis Presley (Bruce Campbell). After falling into a lengthy coma following a freak accident involving hip gyration, he wakes up in an East Texas nursing home, where he befriends Jack (Ossie Davis), an African-American senior who claims to be President John F. Kennedy. After residents of their quiet retirement community start dying of dubiously unnatural causes, Elvis and Jack discover that the perpetrator is Bubba Ho-Tep (Bob Ivy), an Egyptian mummy with murderous intentions.
It honestly sounds more like a comic book than a movie in the first place, so IDW has the right idea by turning it into one. In theBubba Ho-Tepprequel, “President Richard Nixonhas uncovered a potential threat from beyond the stars, but there’s only one man who could possibly safeguard the world as we know it: Elvis Aaron Presley.” The book is titledBubba Ho-Tep and the Cosmic Blood-Suckers. Joe R. Lansdale hopes that this will lead to moreBubba Ho-Tepstories in the future.
“May more Bubba comics burst into existence and give the world the true story of how the world has been protected from evil, and for quite some time. Thank goodness these defenders are out there, working in the shadows.”
A second movie,Bubba Nosferatu: Curse of the She-Vampires, was teased at the end of the original, but despite a lot of talk, it never really came together. Andstar Bruce Campbellhas since said he wouldn’t reprise his role as Elvis Presley, even if the movie ever does happen now. SoBubba Ho-Tep and the Cosmic Blood-Suckerswill have to do for now. And it sounds like it’ll do just fine. you’re able to check out the cover for the first issue by Baldemar Rivas, as revealed byThe Hollywood Reporter, for yourself below.
