By Zack Quaintance — The cable channel AMC is about to get into comics publishing, apparently. I mean, I guess I get it in one sense, which is that AMC’s biggest-ever commercial hit, The Walking Dead, was adapted from a comic, so hey, why not give publishing your own a shot? Seems like fun.

Anyway, the announcement hit this week, and it’s not just that AMC will be publishing comics. No, they’re starting a whole publishing arm, which will have some comics as part of it. Specifically, the first two will be Nights of Lono, which will be written by horror fan and Metallica lead guitarist Kirk Hammett. The other will be Oubilette, penned by Brenden Fletcher (Isola), who also took to Twitter this week to announce a return to comics. AMC did not announce artists, although one imagines they’ll get better about that as they spend more time in comics circles, where people get worked up about announcing new visual storytelling projects without naming the visual storytellers.

In addition to those two series, AMC is also publishing a graphic novel, Miss Fisher’s First Mysteries, which is based on the popular Acorn TV series Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries. That one is to be written by Cecil Castelluci with the artist, once again, not announced. What’s funny about that one is that the TV show is already an adaptation of a prose novel. So we’re going novel -> TV -> graphic novel. Wonder how common that progression is? Can’t think of many instances myself, aside from mega IP that gets into all things eventually.

But I digress. The announcement on the site makes mention of the success of The Art of AMC’s The Walking Dead Universe coffee table book as part of the reason AMC is doing this. That book was published in partnership with Image Comics and Skybound, which makes me think that’s how all these AMC comics will be put out, kind of like how Mark Millar’s Netflix comics still find their way to shops via Image.

Anyway, now all they have to do for this to be a gigantic success is publish another Walking Dead….how hard can that be? I guess we’ll find out…

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Zack Quaintance is a tech reporter by day and freelance writer by night/weekend. He has written about comics for The Beat and NPR Books, among others. He Tweets compulsively about storytelling and comics as Comics Bookcase.