The Best Graphic Novels Still Waiting for Their TV Show

Hollywood has spent the last decade proving that comic book adaptations don’t have to mean spandex and superhero teams.The Sandman, Invincible, The Boys, and The Umbrella Academy all started as graphic novels most casual readers had never picked up, and now they’re some of the biggest shows on streaming. If you want a broader entry point into that world, our list of the 20 best comic books everyone should read is a great place to start browsing.

But for every graphic novel that made the jump, there are dozens still sitting on shelves that would translate just as well, if not better. These are the ones we think deserve their moment, all still in print and easy to grab on Amazon if you want to read them before Hollywood inevitably catches up.

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Saga by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples

Saga might be the single most requested comic-to-TV adaptation that will probably never happen. The space opera follows Alana and Marko, soldiers from opposite sides of an endless galactic war, as they fall in love, have a daughter, and go on the run from both of their governments. It has robots with television heads, a ghost babysitter, and some of the best world-building in modern comics. Vaughan has said publicly he has no interest in adapting it for the screen, wanting the story to exist purely as a comic. That refusal has only made fans want it more, and it remains the gold standard for what a prestige sci-fi drama built from a graphic novel could look like.

Monstress by Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda

Good news for anyone who’s been waiting on this one: it’s actually happening. Monstress follows Maika Halfwolf, a young woman bonded to a monstrous, ancient power, navigating a war-torn world inspired by Asian art and history. Amazon MGM Studios has confirmed the series is moving forward as an adult animated adaptation, with One Piece creator Eiichiro Oda’s team attached. Takeda’s artwork is so richly detailed it practically storyboards itself, and this is one of the clearest cases of a publisher recognizing exactly what they had.

Transmetropolitan by Warren Ellis and Darick Robertson

A gonzo journalist named Spider Jerusalem drags himself out of self-imposed exile to expose corruption in a decaying, hyper-consumerist future city. Transmetropolitan is furious, filthy, and somehow more relevant with every passing year of real-world media chaos. It has been kicked around Hollywood for over a decade without ever landing anywhere, which is honestly baffling given how perfectly its episodic, expose-of-the-week structure fits a prestige limited series format.

East of West by Jonathan Hickman and Nick Dragotta

An alternate America, fractured into competing nations, where a version of the apocalypse’s Four Horsemen walks the earth as a gunslinger seeking revenge. Amazon actually optioned East of West years ago alongside another Hickman project, and neither has surfaced since. The comic’s blend of western iconography, political intrigue, and biblical mythology is exactly the kind of ambitious swing streaming platforms claim to want, and it is genuinely strange this one hasn’t made it to a writers’ room yet.

Black Hammer by Jeff Lemire and Dean Ormston

A group of golden-age-style superheroes gets trapped in a small rural town after a final battle with their world-ending nemesis, unable to leave and slowly losing touch with who they used to be. Black Hammer was optioned by Legendary years back, and creator Jeff Lemire has occasionally teased updates without a concrete series ever materializing. It’s a love letter to superhero history filtered through small-town melancholy, closer in tone to Watchmen than anything currently airing.

The Wicked + The Divine by Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie

Every ninety years, twelve gods reincarnate as young pop stars, are worshipped and adored, and then die within two years. The Wicked + The Divine was optioned for television not long after it launched, and the trail has gone quiet since. Its central premise, blending celebrity culture, mythology, and mortality, feels tailor-made for the kind of stylish, needle-drop-heavy drama that streaming has proven audiences will devour.

Rat Queens by Kurtis J. Wiebe and Roc Upchurch

A foul-mouthed, hard-drinking band of mercenary women takes on monster-slaying jobs in a fantasy world that doesn’t take itself too seriously. Rat Queens has somehow avoided any real adaptation attempt despite being exactly the kind of irreverent, character-driven fantasy comedy that made shows like The Legend of Vox Machina work. Give this one the right writers’ room and it could be appointment television for anyone who wants their fantasy with a sense of humor.

Something Is Killing the Children by James Tynion IV and Werther Dell’Edera

A mysterious monster hunter named Erica Slaughter arrives in a small town to deal with a horror the local adults can’t see or stop. Netflix and Blumhouse have both film and television adaptations of Something Is Killing the Children in development, which makes it one more proof point that publishers are actively mining their backlists for exactly this kind of horror-adjacent, character-driven series. If you’re building out a horror watchlist while you wait, our guide to legally reading comics online is worth bookmarking too.

Why This Keeps Happening

Comic publishers have spent years building exactly the kind of serialized, character-rich stories that television needs, often years before streaming platforms figured out they wanted them. Monstress and Something Is Killing the Childrenprove the pipeline works when the right people notice. The rest of this list proves there’s still a deep well of material sitting untouched, waiting for someone in a Hollywood office to actually finish reading the trade paperback instead of just optioning the rights and letting it sit in a drawer.

Which graphic novel do you think deserves a series before anything else on this list? Let us know in the comments.