The cover star of STARBURST’s most recent issue (which you can still purchase here), The Toxic Avenger is reportedly returning to the world of comics. Matt Bors, who founded the online political comics publication The Nib, alongside artist and caricaturist Fred Harper, are working on what will be a five-issue comic book series, reports THR.

The comic is based on the 1984 low-budget cult classic film by Lloyd Kaufman – who we speak with about the film’s history in our aforementioned print mag. In the original film, Toxie (as fans affectionately nicknamed him) was a janitor named Melvin Junko who, after falling into an oil drum of toxic waste, becomes the unexpected vigilante of his New Jersey hometown.

Toxic launched a B-movie franchise with sequels, a musical, cartoon, and a short Marvel series published in the 1990s. Most recently, Legendary produced a remake of The Toxic Avenger starring Peter Dinklage and Jacob Tremblay.

Bors also states that “this series will combine elements of the original films with the Toxic Crusaders cartoon and characters in familiar ways, updated to tell a story of environmental devastation, corporate control, and social media mutation. The Toxic Avenger is first and foremost an environmental satire, one about a small town and its unremarkable people trapped and transformed by circumstances they don’t control. The story Fred Harper and I are telling is about people frustrated by authorities telling them not to worry about their life, that things are fine, even as their dog mutates in front of their eyes. And at its core it is about a powerless boy, Melvin, who finds out he can be incredibly strong, hideously mutated, well-admired, and incredibly heroic… but still ultimately powerless over human behaviour.”

AHOY Comics is behind the revival of this comic series, with the first issue eyeing an October 9th 2024 release date.