Like all good heroes, Wynonna Earp keeps coming back for more adventures. Created by Beau Smith in the mid-'90s, the monster-hunter with ties to one of the Wild West's most famous lawmen debuted in a five-issue series drawn by Joyce Chin and Pat Lee. Smith followed that up at IDW with the three-issue "Home on the Strange" with artist Carlos Ferreira in 2003, and then "The Yeti Wars" with Enrique Villagran at the beginning of this decade.

RELATED: Syfy Debuts First "Wynonna Earp" Promo Images

Now, Smith returns to the character once more, as she's poised to make her television debut. Announced in July, the Syfy series scored a 13-episode first season starring Melanie Scrofano, Tim Rozon and Shamier Anderson as Wynonna, Doc Holiday and Agent Dolls. Smith and artist Lora Innes plan on integrating elements from the show along with new bits and familiar ones to create a new ongoing series launching in February at IDW, that takes place during the agent's early days with the Black Badge Division.

CBR News: Between the show and the new comic, what's it like to experience this resurrection of a character you created almost 20 years ago?

Beau Smith: It's been 28 years this year that I've been working in comics and it's the same feeling: I'm literally a 12-year-old trapped in an old man's body. To be honest with you, when we first started getting the dailies in and seeing the first rough cuts of the first three episodes, hearing characters say my words, it made me feel 12 years old. That's something I'm very, very thankful for. It's great!

Was the movement on the television show what really kickstarted the new comic, or was it something you'd been planning all along?

I've always got story arcs and new things that are in the pipeline that are ready depending on sales and what the market's doing. [The show] did help kickstart that quite a bit. I had the graphic novel "Wynonna Earp: The Yeti Wars" probably three years ago. Now, we have the new, six-issue arc with the TV show. It makes perfect business sense to have that come out alongside the television series.

Where is Wynonna at as the new comic series launches?

I've always written Wynonna at being about 35-years-old, but what we're doing with this new series is really taking her back to when she was 25 and first in the Black Badge Division. It's not an origin, per se, but it's young Wynonna Earp, before she learned all the ropes and was still acting pretty off-the-cuff. It's also before her hair turned blonde. That's one thing people will notice right off the bat.

You mentioned a connection, but do the book and comics share the same continuity?

It's a hybrid. I want the core readers to get their Wynonna fix with the Wynonna they've known, only they're getting the beginning. At the same time, if new readers come over from the television series, I want them to be able to relate to what they're seeing on the screen.

To be honest with you, I'd say a good four or five months went in to interweaving both of them. I've seen the scripts and the outlines for the television series a good year and a half in advance. That gave me a chance to weave that with what I already had set up for the next arc. Timing has really been good. More times than not, timing works against it in comics. This time, we're very fortunate that it's worked out.

A lot of people outside the industry don't understand that what I'm working on now won't be out for four to six months. It's always hard for us in the comic industry to keep it secret, because you're excited. You want to tell everybody! It's part of the excitement that helps us all feel young. It's a common bond.

What is it about Wynonna as a character and this concept in general that has kept it going even into other avenues like TV?

The Wyatt Earp ancestry has a lot to do with it, in the fact that everyone knows that name, whether it's from history or films and television series that have come before. I've been an Old West buff since I was a small child. I've ready pretty much every book about Wyatt Earp and certain publications and journals. It's something I've always been interested in since I was a kid. At the same time, as a kid I was always interested in the Universal Monsters. I guess it was around college when I wanted to find some way to combine the two. In the early and mid-'90s it just hit me that a descendant could hunt paranormal fugitives for a Black Badge Division that Teddy Roosevelt started over a hundred years ago. It came with an instant history.

It's a cliche you hear it so much, "So and so is writing a strong female character." As a writer, that drives me nuts, because I'm writing people, whether they're male, female, in-between, outside, inside. You're writing people, with personalities and characteristics. You want them A-number one to be likable and, two, you can always put them in an extreme situation or conflict that's going to make for compelling story. The real art is making people like that character. With Wynonna Earp, that's what I always wanted to do. I wanted to make you like her, whether you were male or female. It didn't matter. I've always resented the "strong female lead" thing. No, she's a person who happens to be female, but she's a person first.

Her personality is a part, but there's monsters! Everybody loves monsters. At one time in your life, you're big on Frankenstein or the Wolf Man, and I'm just trying to find a different slant to make that even more appealing.

In a lot of ways, "Wynonna Earp" was ahead of the curve by being a female-led book focusing on monsters. Did you have any inkling back then that that sort of pairing would be big for this long?

That's always in the back of your head, because, as a writer, you daydream. Ted Adams, the CEO of IDW, he and I have been friends since 1990 when we hired him out of college to be our distribution manager at Eclipse Comics. He and I worked for Todd McFarlane for years at McFarlane Toys, and I was the VP of marketing at IDW for a while. I'll never forget, in '96 he was working at Wildstorm. He read the first issue and he goes, "Beau, this is a TV series. This is going to work out as a TV series." Back then, he firmly believed, and I was going, "Oh, yeah. Maybe," but he had a strong, passionate belief that it would. He went on to start IDW and would say, "We're going to make it; it's born for [TV]."

We were optioned by Fox TV the first time. It was the same year they optioned "Dollhouse" and "Fringe." Needless to say, we got thrown on the back burner over Joss [Whedon] and J.J. [Abrams]. I can't understand it, but it did happen! [Laughs] We firmly believed in it, and through Ted's fortitude and belief, Wynonna's going to be on television. I totally give him all, full-throttle credit. I may have created the thing, but he's the one that put it in the back seat and said, "Hit the gas, we're going."

What are some of the monstrous threats Wynonna will find herself up against in these earlier adventures?

The Chupacabra Cartel is who we're up against in the first one. What they do is provide human organs for the rest of the hierarchy of monsters. Let's say a pre-decaying zombie millionaire wants nothing but the finest and smartest brains to dine on. Well, they provide that. Bobo Del Rey, who was the first villain in the '96 series, his brother Mars Del Rey is the facilitator of the Chupacabra Cartel. He's providing services such as that. The vampire nation wants blood. They don't want junkie blood, they want the good stuff, and he provides that. You've got spellcasters who need body parts for certain spells they want to cast. Mars Del Rey is basically a harvester and a facilitator of this. Wynonna Earp and the Black Badge Division have been trailing and chasing him.

In one of the issues, we've got a very unique twist on underground fighting. There's been a million direct-to-video movies about the secret underground fights. Well, this one takes place in my home state of West Virginia. Everyone immediately thinks West Virginia, and they think stump-jumping hillbilly stuff, but there's going to be a slight twist on that that will make things interesting. I can't say too much about that one right now.

I always try to take a standard monster and give it a modern day twist that will make it interesting, yet still make the core following go, "Oh, gremlins -- I've never seen them in this light before."

On the other side of the coin. What kind of supporting cast or team will she have around her? Will there be any familiar faces for longtime fans?

Once again, I'm doing the hybrid thing. Agent Dolls and Doc Holliday from the television series, I've worked them into the new series. At the same time, I will be bringing in a couple of the supporting characters that were in the original series. In the third issue, I'm bringing in a brand new team member that I'm real excited about. This is a character that I've been wanting to do for a long time. I kept thinking, "I've got to find a place for this character" and bang, it lands right in this. The character's name is Valdez. It's a very, very neat character. I'm lucky enough that I get to mix characters from the television show, from my own creation of the original series and some new ones.

To me, the supporting cast is always the most fun. When I was a kid growing up reading "Spider-Man," Spider-Man had an amazing supporting cast. That always drew me to that book. I want to continue that tradition. Believe me, I'm no Stan Lee, but this is my tribute to him.

The industry has changed quite a bit since Wynonna debuted in 1996. Were there any areas where you felt the need to change the character, or are you just continuing on with your original vision?

I still have it in my notes, but when I actually created [the story] back in '94, I take her all the way to her death at some point in her life. I've still got that, and I'm still working towards that. The only thing was, coming out in '96, during that time, art-wise it was the Image art style. It was not what I always had in my head for Wynonna.

That was always a bit of a battle for me. In my head, I always saw Wynonna Earp drawn in a Scot Eaton style. But, everything was "Barb Wire" back then, and we sort of got it forced on us. That was part of it, but the market has changed. Gradually, as Wynonna's different series' came out, little by little, she got to look like how I'd always envisioned her in my head. In "The Yeti Wars," Enrique Villagran did a very solid job. She was smart and sexy without looking like a hooker on a pole. That's where I always wanted to get her. That was through market change. The character and the things she did never changed, but it was always a look kind of thing that I was dealing with.

Moving into the new series, what drew you to Lora Innes, and how did you come across her work?

Lora Innes of "The Dreamer" is going to be the artist, penciling and inking it. We're taking it to a very neat level. I met Laura at a Mid-Ohio Con when she was a teenager. Jeff Smith brought her over and said she had a lot of potential. I looked at her stuff, and she and I have been friends ever since. When she's had questions throughout, I've tried to help her out. I hope I haven't been detrimental to her career. [Laughs]

I've got the first ten pages here on the computer, and she's doing an amazing job. She's adding so much expression! You take guys like Kevin Maguire and Chris Sprouse, people who can really add a lot of expression to their characters, she's really good at that. And the action, even the talking heads scenes, she's captured them. I'm really, really excited having her on the art. She captures Wynonna at 25 the way she should be.

Beau Smith and Lora Innes' "Wynonna Earp" debuts in February from IDW Publishing.